


Her Midnight Man

by siriuslyhiddenlawyer



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Case Fic, F/M, Molly and Her Sherlock, Post TFP, Serial Killers, Sherlock and His Molly, Sherlock and Molly, Sherlolly - Freeform, Untold Cases of Sherlock Holmes, angsty sherlolly, cannibal, mollock, original character serial killer, sexy sherlolly, sherlolly sex, sherlolly smut, smutty sherlolly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2019-02-13 15:06:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 41,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12986643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/siriuslyhiddenlawyer/pseuds/siriuslyhiddenlawyer
Summary: Months after the phone call from Sherrinford shook the foundation of their lives, Sherlock and Molly are trying to figure out their relationship while dealing with a cannibal loose in London. Post The Final Problem so SPOILERS.MATURE CONTENT (rating for language, sexual situations and mild violence)Originally published on FanFiction.net.





	1. Her Midnight Man

**Author's Note:**

> TFP Spoilers-- mature content below! Reader discretion is advised!
> 
> Work below is not beta'd so forgive any and all typos!

            Molly was trembling.

            Wearing nothing but the flimsy lace robe, she looked up into her lover’s pale eyes. The look of hunger there made her knees weak just as it gave her strength to proceed with her plan. She knew she was blushing but the heat in his eyes, the desperation that lingered to the corners of those clear, extraordinary eyes….

            She had to do this for him, for them.

            The past few months with him had been…a dream. They were everything she had imagined, the good and the bad. He had become her entire world, consuming her every thought, every molecule of her being. He had been such a huge part of her existence before they’d become lovers but now, she felt him swallow her completely.

            She was still Molly, but she was a Molly that Sherlock owned, that Sherlock consumed. She was a different version of the same person that had pined for him for all those years, that had let him control her even in his arrogance and ignorance. He inhabited her skin just as completely as she inhabited it. She only had to close her eyes to feel him wandering around in her skin, touching her from the inside.

            She licked her lips as they stood in this perfect, pregnant moment, watching each other, studying each other. She remembered the first night…that first time.

            He had appeared in her bedroom in the middle of the night, looking older, as if the weight of the world had suddenly crashed down on him. She had been terrified by how broken he had seemed that night, and the tears that wracked his body throughout had broken her heart. She had held him in her arms, kissed his tears away. And by the following evening, he had told her what had happened with his sister, with John and Mycroft…why he had called her and demanded she say “I love you”.

            And how the revelation in that stressful moment, when he had thought she was going to die, had shaken loose the truth from his soul.

            They’d made love that night with a ferocity and passion that she knew was from the true Sherlock, the passionate man who could no longer contain the part of him that drove his every decision. She’d woken up the next morning with bruises and sore muscles in the most delicious places, and he had made love to her in that insane way twice before allowing her to get dressed and go to work. 

            But something happened…in the past six months, the ferocity was being forced down again. He hadn’t quite reverted back to being the robot, the man who refused to acknowledge or understand anything associated with feelings or human emotions. The revelation from his sister had brought him to a point of no return, but he was regressing…He didn’t hold back the way he used to, but he no longer let himself feel to the capacity of that first night.

            The memories still made Molly shiver…the way he had licked the inside of her mouth, entering her with such hard thrusts that her body had moved across the bed, the way you he held her down by the neck when he took her from behind, the sound his hips made when he slammed against her.

            Oh, that had been delicious.

            But after that…after that it had become tamer. She had watched the wildness recede progressively. They still had amazing sex but he held back. When he was inside her, when she looked deep into eyes as he thrust inside her with measured beats, she saw the ferocity in their pale depths, saw the desperation for control, the absolute conviction that control was key.

            And he still didn’t let her leave the bed, insisting on holding her against him the entire night, demanding to know where she was going if she so much as reached for her mobile on the nightstand or had to use the loo at night.

            His hugs were tighter every time he had an appointment to meet with his sister. The way he held her when he was about to leave always felt as if he was drawing strength from Molly, standing straighter, breathing deeply, and carrying his head high. And the way he held her after he returned…she absorbed him then, taking all his hurt, all his confusion, gathering the shattered pieces of his heart and nurtured them back to his beautiful self. She would hold him hours and hours those nights, sitting in her darkened flat with nothing but the shadows for company as she stroked his hair and placed kisses all over his face.

            She didn’t want the old Sherlock back, she wanted him to be free with her. Wanted him to know that whatever he needed, whatever he was feeling, was safe in her heart, always.

            So, she had come up with this scheme. Trapping him, essentially, in this moment. In this very room, taking all his control away.

            As she wet her lips, gazing into those iridescent eyes, she refused to acknowledge the fact that she had gotten the idea from someone having thrown Irene Addler’s name into a conversation.

            “Molly?” he lifted a brow, his voice deep. He was still wearing his overcoat, the blue scarf hiding the elegant column of his neck from her, his hands stuffed into his coat pockets. His tone made her think of a conversation long gone, when she had compared him to her dead father, and he’d told her to never try to make small talk. “What’s going on?’

            She didn’t answer him, dropping the scrap of lace to the ground, smiling as she heard him catch his breath. She was completely nude, save for the smile on her face. Her hair up in a bun, wearing a touch of lipstick, she stood before her lover. “Running an experiment,” she murmured, putting her hand on the center of his chest, feeling his heart hammer beneath her palm.

            “What sort of experiment Dr. Hooper?” he murmured, his eyes somehow never leaving hers.

            “It’s a two parter actually,” she stepped closer to him…close enough to feel the heat from his body but not touching. Not yet. “First part is how well does Sherlock Holmes follow instructions,” she brought her lips close to his, a whisper away, “the second is how fast can I make Sherlock Holmes orgasm?”

            “Mmm,” he hummed, trying to sound non-pulsed. But his heart was pounding against her palm, his breath being pulled from his lungs as if he’d just run a marathon around London. “What are your parameters?”

            “Simple really,” she stepped closer, shivering as her nipples brushed against the rough material of his coat. A shock of electricity went through her body, warming her, making her more wet than she already was. “You don’t get to touch me until I tell you,” she smiled, her lips now a sigh from his, “actually, you don’t do anything unless I tell you to do it.”

            “What’s my incentive?” his voice was a low growl, a wild jaguar trapped in the elegant confines of a Stradivarian cello.

            “If you follow instructions, I will let you touch me in turn, and give you one-week free reign at Bart’s,” she couldn’t help feeling pleased at herself.

            “And this study,” he was fidgeting in his spot, she could tell by the way his shoulders bunched that he was making fists in his pocket, gripping the material of his coat from inside to keep himself from reaching for her, “what is the objective?”

            Molly smiled, having anticipated the question successfully. She wrapped her arms around his neck, loving the way his clothed body felt against her naked one, the way the flaps of his coat brushed between her thighs, the way the wool scratched and teased her sensitive nipples. He felt so good, he felt so vital. He was her destiny, and there was no use in fighting him. He was the unstoppable force in her life, and she’d been the immovable object for so long. “My love,” she murmured, finally brushing her lips against his, “my darling,” she flicked out the tip of her tongue to lick the crease of his closed mouth, “my Sherlock,” she smiled for him, “we shall discover the objective together.”

            He swallowed, opening his mouth slightly, his own tongue wetting his lips in anticipation. She was pressed so tightly now, rubbing against him, feeling his bulging erection against her stomach, “I accept,” he whispered.

            “I had hoped that would be your answer,” she grinned broadly at him now, butterflies fluttering in her stomach, anticipation gripping her, lust filling her and driving away any doubt. Any insecurity. He was hers, this gorgeous man was now completely at her mercy. “As a reward my love, you can hold me.”

            Sherlock didn’t need to be told twice, his arms wrapped tightly around her body, holding her against him with a vicelike grip. He was running his broad elegant hands down her back, feathering across her shoulder blades, whispering down her spine to grip her buttocks, kneading her flesh expertly, drawing her closer to his erection. “As ever, Molly Hooper, I found myself in need of you.”

 

           

 


	2. Idiot Prayer

Molly moaned against him, spreading her legs slightly as his fingers continued massaging her plump flesh. Her lips found his jaw, spreading kisses over the curve, making him jump slightly when she nipped him. He slid a hand from her waist, feathering across her stomach and would have cupped her between her thighs had she not taken a step away from him. She took such great pleasure in watching him sway towards her, as if she had been the only thing him holding him upright. He looked so disheveled, his eyes alert with lust and want. She luxuriated in the knowledge that she was the reason for it, and she was just getting started.

            “Tsk tsk tsk, already trying to break the rules, Mr. Holmes?” she shook her head.

            “To be fair, you said I could hold you, you didn’t specify where I could use your body to hold you,” he told her, rolling his shoulders as if trying to get rid of the tension in them.

            She laughed at that, adoring him more as her eyes traced the bulge in his trousers. She had never been this forward with any of her lovers, never this bold in anything she had ever done. But Sherlock reveled in her strength, seemed to rely on it more that she had thought. It gave her strength, knowing that whether she was eloquent or a stuttering fool, he would adore her.

            Molly dropped to her knees in front of him, “now listen closely,” she told him, look up at him. Sherlock was looking down at her as if he’d never seen anything like her before. The intimacy of her position, the way he was looking at her, his breathing faster as a curl fell across his forehead. She licked her lips, “unzip your fly and take your cock out. But don’t drop your trousers,” she instructed, wondering what was going on in his head.

            He followed instruction perfectly, his fingers trembling slightly as he unbuttoned his trousers, taking out his erection, his trousers never falling. She moaned as she saw him, feeling faint as she imagined what it felt to have it in her throat, deep inside her body, his breath hot in her ear as he pumped into her… “good,” she grinned, “hands back in your pocket please,” she murmured, sitting back on her knees, waiting for him to follow her instructions.

            “Molly,” his voice was rough, his fingers curling in the air as if he was gripping her hair, “I need…to touch you.”

            She chuckled, putting her hands between her knees as she watched him, “not within the parameters of the experiment darling.”

            “Molly,” he groaned her name on a tormented sigh, but he stuffed his fists back into his coat.

            She rose up on her knees now, touching her tongue to the smooth head of his cock and felt his entire body shuttering. Oh how she loved this, loved that he was on the brink, how his entire body was at her mercy. And when she took him into her mouth, the noise he made would live inside her skin for the rest of her life. She watched as he threw his head back, his throat an elegant column as he moaned again, pushing himself deeper into her mouth.

            Molly took as much of him as she could, savoring him, using her tongue to tease him, her teeth to make him jump. She gripped his thighs to keep herself balanced as she rose up on her knees to get a better angle, heard his moans, her name a whisper.

            “Let me touch you,” he groaned in desperation, his voice several octaves deeper than normal, the jaguar slowly purring his way out of the cello, “please let me tough you my Molly,” his voice was so deep now that his words were garbled.

            She smiled against him, stroking him with her hands, “not yet my love,” she told him, pressing open mouth kisses against his shaft, “not just yet.”

            Opening her mouth, she swallowed as much of him as she could handle and he jumped, words leaving him faster than he could contain them, “my love, my darling,” he moaned, “my Molly, let me...oh let me touch you. I will die if you don’t let me. Oh, my Molly…”

            In his lucid moments, he never used any terms of endearment beyond the occasional darling sprinkled into conversation. “Darling” was her reward for pleasing him, but this…this was something else entirely. This was Sherlock, becoming unhinged as she pleasured him with her mouth and hands, her tongue and throat.

            And she was dying to let him touch her, dying to feel those elegant fingers entangled in her hair, stroking her skull as he took what she gave him. But she knew them too well, knew that if she let him, they would both become unhinged. In order for this “experiment” to succeed, she needed at least one of them to have some sense of control.

            “Soon my love,” her breath was a hot whisper against his thick flesh, “not just yet,” she grinned.

            He looked down at her, his eyes glowing with desire, his lips moist and delicious. In that moment, Molly wished she was an artist, a painter, so that she could capture the lust in his eyes, the look of utter desperation, of glowing hot desire. His eyes shocked her with their intensity, a few of his curls loose and framing his gorgeous face, a high sheen on his luxurious cheekbones. Her own desire gripped her as she smiled up at him, a tight fist of want low in her belly, making her shiver in anticipation.

            “My beautiful Sherlock,” she whispered, part of her in this moment, tasting him, reveling in the taste of him while another part of her marveled at how they had gotten there. The desperation, the secret love she had felt for him all those years had brought here. Somehow, she had survived, somehow she had found enough resilience to get to this point. Somehow, the universe smiled down upon her, and this amazing man was in love with her.

            “Molly…” something in his voice got her attention, she looked up at him again to see his eyes had become alert, as if he had just woken up from a nightmare. There was panic on his face, he was blinking rapidly, and her heart sank. “Molly,” he said her name again, take a step back.

            “Sherlock? What’s wrong? What is it?” she was convinced she had done something wrong, something he didn’t like. She reached out for his hand but he waved her away, quickly stuffing his erection back into his trousers. “What happened?” she stood up, ignorant of her own state of nudity, terrified as the panic in his eyes grew.

            “I can’t do this,” his voice was hoarse as he walked backwards to her bedroom door, “I…I…I can’t do this, I have to go,” he stammered, running both hands through his hair as he walked through her bedroom door. She saw the shimmer of tears in those gorgeous eyes, reflecting the moonlight outside, “I can’t.”

            And he was gone.

            She stood there for a while, completely naked, wondering what had happened, what had gone wrong. Her body was in a state of shock at that point, having been so aroused, and so convinced she would spend the night in his arms…she started shivering earnestly, at last noticing the tears that began to stream down her cheeks.

            She walked towards her bed, her fingers shaking as she got her phone out of the drawer in her nightstand. Molly had trouble typing, forcing herself to take deep breaths:

                        _John, can you plz go to 221B? SH needs u_

-MH

            John responded within a few minutes:

                        _OMW. U ok?_

-JW

            She responded with trembling fingers that she was fine, and turned off her phone before tossing it back into the drawer. She wrapped a blanket around her naked body, going through her flat and turning off all the lights, making sure her doors and windows were properly locked. She didn’t even bother turning on the lights in the bathroom as she took a shower, standing under the hot stream until her skin turned pink. She crawled into bed naked and wet, falling into the deep sleep of heartbreak and trauma.

 


	3. Where Do We Go Now But Nowhere

             John Watson held his daughter against his hip as they walked to 221B Baker street. Rosie had her arms tightly wrapped around his neck, having spent so much time at Baker street that she was chattering excitedly about getting to see her Uncle Sherlock and Mrs. Hudson. She referred to the latter as Hudders, thanks to Sherlock’s unique ability to brainwash his goddaughter.      

            They had been on their way to Baker street when Sherlock had called. Mrs. Hudson had agreed to watch Rosie for a few hours while John ran errands around town, so when Molly had texted him, he hadn’t needed to change anything. But his mind was racing…Molly’s texts were usually more flowery, filled with greetings, exclamation points, and she managed to use emoji’s without being obnoxious about them.

            Being Rosie’s godmother had brought Molly more intimately into John Watson’s life, and she had quickly become his friend and ally, separate from Sherlock. He trusted her to watch his daughter for long periods of time, trusted her implicitly with his very life and the life of Rosie. Mary had adored Molly, the two women have forged a strong bond after he and Mary had gotten married. And he had learned that if Mary loved Molly, then he had no reason to doubt her.

            John had been ecstatic when Sherlock had finally come to his senses and begun seeing Molly as more than someone who worked at Bart’s and happened to be his friend. She had been so good for him, helping Sherlock deal with the emotions that had been brought to surface by Eurus Holmes. She had volunteered to help excavate the bones of little Victor Trevor from the well, and had been with Sherlock when the child’s family had put him to rest. She had not left Sherlock’s side as he wrestled with his emotions, as the machine began to shut down under the overwhelming emotions of childhood. Her patience with him was astonishing.

            And she had done so as only Molly could. She didn’t use overt techniques or methods, she just silently remained by his side, knowing when to touch him gently on the arm to remind him that he was not alone, or pressing a kiss to his shoulder to remind that he was loved. She had even been the one to suggest that Sherlock visit Sherrinford and play the violin for his sister. And Molly’s brilliant plan had worked, because with each of Sherlock’s visit, Eurus was able to communicate more and more through music, connecting with another human through that medium.

            John had been Sherlock’s best friend long enough to see that changes in his friend, see the joy Molly brought to him, the comfort he took in having someone he could trust his emotions with. But there was a storm brewing…bits and pieces of the old Sherlock were surfacing, bubbling. He was worried what the fallout was going to be like, and how Molly Hooper would pay the price for the past few months of utter joy.

            As he used his key to open the front door of the Mrs. Hudson’s building, something in his gut told him that the proverbial shit had the fan, and Sherlock was going down the rabbit’s hole. He handed Rosie off to the landlady with a kiss on his daughter’s cheek, promising Mrs. Hudson that he’d be back in a few hours.

            “Is Sherlock here?” he asked Mrs. Hudson before leaving.

            “I heard him fumbling around upstairs earlier,” she answered, distracted by the kisses Rosie was peppering her with.

            John took the stairs two at a time, entering the flat to find his best friend sitting on the leather sofa with his hands steepled under his chin in his thoughtful pose, his eyes shut. The rigidity of his body told John that the old Sherlock was back, that something had happened to force him back into the cage of his mind.

            “Sherlock?” John dropped into his armchair with a groan, slightly terrified as he thought about what Molly looked like now. Eviscerated, probably.

            Because Molly had confided in him that she had a date planned, which included keeping Sherlock hidden away for the entire weekend starting that evening. But clearly, something had happened.

            “Oh John, good,” Sherlock barely looked at him, “can you hand me your phone please?”

            John sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose, “why? What’s wrong with yours?”

            “Can’t get a signal,” he answered but John was too tired, his years of friendship with Sherlock taught him that further inquiry would only cause a bigger headache, and handed his best friend the phone.

            The lines of strain around Sherlock’s eyes worried him, and he found himself again wondering what state he had left Molly in.

            Sherlock used John’s phone, his fingers flying across the screen. He listened to the phone ring but he was dumped to voicemail after the fourth ring, he hung up with a frown and silently handed John back the phone.

            He didn’t say anything for a few moments, staring blankly at a spot in front of him, lost in his thoughts, lost to the world it seemed.

            But before John could say anything, Sherlock shook himself out of his thoughts. “Right then, have you heard of Jonathan Leonardo?”  
            “He’s some sort of big shot psychiatrist or something isn’t he? He’s been on the telly,” John answered, wondering where this was going, “why?”  
            “He’s a criminal profiler. And he’s cannibalized four people in the past three months alone, and Scotland Yard, in its finite wisdom, has been unable to catch him,” Sherlock stood suddenly, walking abruptly to the window to look down into the street below.

            “So?” John asked, knowing he sounded exasperated. He had so enjoyed it when his best friend had seemed like a normal man. A man with abnormal intelligence sure but it had been so affirming to see him experience emotions like a normal human being, to see him laughing and joking, seeing him dotting on Molly, even giddy when she was around him. This old Sherlock, the machine that had been produced from childhood trauma, had not been missed by anyone.

            “So, we’re going to catch him,” Sherlock turned to him with a grin that was frightening, “may lose a few organs in the process but I think it’ll be worth it in the end. Imagine John! An actual cannibal!” but John’s expression must not have changed dramatically because Sherlock wrung his hands in the air, “do you know how rare cannibals are, John? This is fantastic. Oh, I’ve been so bored! Bored out of my wits! Bored out of my skin! This cannibal is exactly what I’ve needed.”

            “Not Molly Hooper?” John checked the outgoing call log on his phone to find that Sherlock had dialed Molly’s phone number.

            But Sherlock pretended not to hear him, instead he walked to the door and put his Belstaff on with a dramatic swirl, “Lestrade’s in over his head and he’s asked for our help! The game is on!”

            John stood in front of him in the doorway, not letting him walk past, “what about Molly?”

            But Sherlock remained silent, carefully looking over John’s shoulder to avoid making eye contact but the muscles in his jaw were ticking as if he were grinding his molars into nubs.

            Filled with anger and disappointment, John pointed a finger at his best friend, “you utter COCK,” he said through gritted teeth, but Sherlock flinched when John raised his voice, taking a step back. And suddenly John wanted to throw up, his eyes tracing the scar his wedding ring hand left just beneath Sherlocks right eye. The scar was a permanent reminder of what had happened in that hospital morgue. So, he took a deep breath, trying not to drown in the guilt and anger that began bubbling inside him.

“She was the best thing that ever happened to you, and you’ve gone and pushed her away. You ignorant, blind cock,” he said as calmly as he could, turning his back and began walking down the stairs.

 

* * *

 

 

            “I know it’s short notice but I’m hoping you’ll be able to accommodate me since I haven’t taken a holiday since I started working here,” Molly told Mike Stamford the next morning, standing in his office and pulling on her fingers as if she was trying to pull them off, “I mean there was that one time I took leave for my father’s funeral, the three days for John and Mary’s wedding…”

           Mike interrupted her, “you deserve this holiday Molly, don’t worry. I’ll get everything in order,” he assured her with his gentle smile. He cocked his head, “everything all right?”

         “Yeah! Yeah, just need a breather,” she assured him with a nod, “there’s been a lot going on you know, and I just need to go somewhere sunny where nobody knows my name, or that I’m a pathologist.”

          “Is…Sherlock going with you?” Mike asked hesitantly.

           “No, I’m sure he’s got work,” she stood up and headed out of his office, “thanks Mike, I really appreciate this.”  
 

 


	4. Hiding All Away

            Two weeks later, Molly stood in the morgue at Bart’s, trying to keep her eyes open long enough to pour coffee down her throat. She was tempted to splash the scalding hot black stuff directly to her face in hopes of waking herself up, becoming more alert. She was back to working backbreaking hours at the hospital, pulling 16 hour shifts with only one day off a week. She took all the work she could get her hands on, and if her sleep pattern suffered then who cared?

            At least she wasn’t dreaming anymore...

            She looked down at the chart in front of her, her chest a chasm of ice because she knew Sherlock, John, and Greg Lestrade were on their way down to hear the results of the autopsy she’d just performed. The woman on the slab was the cannibal’s latest victim, or so Sherlock believed. The woman was perfectly intact save for an unassuming incision in the center of her chest where her heart had been removed, and presumably consumed. Sherlock was convinced he knew who the cannibal actually was, but hadn’t gotten enough proof for the Yard to actually make an arrest.

            “Wotcher Molly,” Greg crashed through the doors of the morgue, startling Molly and making her spill some of her coffee on the floor. John Watson followed, giving her a smile and coming to stand beside her in a gesture of support. Then _he_ walked in, Sherlock, his hands stuffed in his pocket, his head bowed, nose and cheeks red from the chill of the London fall. Sherlock stood opposite them with Greg, and she shivered slightly, remembering their last encounter when he’d had his hands in his pockets, looking down at her with his eyes aflame as his hips pumped him deeper in her throat…

            “What do we think? Cannibal?” Greg prompted, sounding slightly excited.

            “We’re just calling this guy ‘cannibal’? I thought you said Sherlock knows who it is,” she frowned at Greg.

            “He won’t tell me who it is,” Greg answered, rolling his eyes, “not until we have enough proof.”

            “It’s better this way,” Sherlock said, sounding exasperated, “if I tell you who it is then you would be too biased in your collection of evidence. Think of this as an experiment with a blind subject and testing parameters, an opportunity for the Yard to actually use their brain cells instead of sitting around the office all day, wasting taxpayer money and gorging themselves on coffee and donuts that slowly congeal your arteries with artificial sugars and sweeteners.”

            “ _That_ was pleasant,” John rubbed the bridge of her nose, “Did you find anything Molly?”

            “Well there was nothing on the body that would lead to anything we could identify, no fingerprints, no stray hairs, nothing like that,” she set her coffee mug down on the empty table and walked forward to pull the sheet off the corpse of the young woman. She had been beautiful, with short brown hair streaked with red, green eyes, and perfect mocha colored skin. “I don’t know if this is a cannibal but I can tell you she’s missing…”

            Sherlock interrupted her, “vital organs. Kidneys, liver, heart, lungs.”

            Exasperated, she didn’t even look at him, “Wrong. She’s just missing her heart, everything else is still where it’s supposed to be. The incision is perfect, whoever removed her heart definitely has a medical background.”

            “Why do you say that?” John Watson asked her but she just remained silent, knowing Sherlock wouldn’t let her explain.

            And he didn’t disappoint. “The incision is perfect, directly over the heart, and the way the wound has been closed indicates previous experience. Not only that but an amateur would not have known which tendons to cut, or how to spread the ribcage to access the chest cavity. If this had been an amateur, the chest would have been shredded to pieces, all the ribs broken. But here, the ribs were separated expertly then reattached with wires. He took his time, which means he has the privacy for the activity, and has access to medical equipment.”

            John looked at Molly, who shrugged, crossing her arms in front of her chest. She had spent 2 days carefully looking at the girl’s body, surveying every single detail, as well as cataloging every fiber or smudge of anything that was found on her and in her clothes. Which was a waste of her time. Had she known Sherlock was working on this case, she would have reassigned it to someone else to collect the evidence and worked on something else. She understood how important it was to actually provide evidence to what Sherlock was saying but God help her, she felt wasted and used.

            “Molly?” Greg prompted her, his tone suggesting that he’d been talking to her for quite some time.

            “Hmm? Sorry, I’m leaving for holiday tomorrow and my mind’s already taken off,” she smiled at Greg, asking him to repeat what he had said. “Oh sure, I’ll have Mike send the paperwork to your office once the lab results are in.”

            “Holiday?” Sherlock asked, suddenly interested, his eyes intent as they sought hers, “where are you going? We’re in the middle of a case.”

            “ _You’re_ in the middle of a case darling, not me,” she told him, pulling the sheet back over the body to give her something to do. The term of endearment had slipped out before she knew it, and once it was out there, she pretended she didn’t want to turn back time and take it back. Molly decided to just pretend she hadn’t said it.

            “Where?” he demanded.

            She had deliberately picked a spot where Sherlock wouldn’t be able to trace her, where he wouldn’t even imagine that she would travel to by herself. She had essentially spun a globe and booked her flight and lodging wherever her finger landed. Which happened to be on a remote island in the Pacific. She would also double check anything Sherlock could’ve come into contact with for tracking devices. “Nowhere special,” she looked up at the three men, “is there anything else I can do or are we finished here?”

            “I think we’ve got everything we need,” Greg pushed himself away from the wall he’d been leaning against, coming towards her to give her a hug, “enjoy yourself and stay out of trouble. Let me know if you need anything,” he told her.

            She smiled, returning his hug, “I will,” she answered before pulling away. Sherlock’s eyes burned the back of her head, he was watching her so intensely. “I’ll swing by your place later to see Rosie,” she told John.

            Molly had never been the type to want to cause or create drama. Her inability to look at Sherlock was due to the fact that she was afraid it would trigger all her rage, all her want, all her love if she even glanced at the prick. She refused to make anyone feel awkward around them…especially the haphazard family that they had created. The last thing she wanted to do was for anyone to pick sides about their relationship, or create any awkwardness between them.

            So, she steeled her heart, taking a deep breath to look to Sherlock, expecting him to say something. But he was playing with his phone, a furrow creasing his brows as he concentrated on his phone screen, walking out of the lab without a backwards glance.

            Molly wished she had called after him, telling him that he should stop standing across from her flat like a specter every night for fear of giving the neighbors a fright. She wished she had let him know that he wasn’t being clever, spying on her. That she had spotted his vigil the night after he had walked out on her…But she just watched him walk out of the lab.

            She knew that if he had made any kind of effort in the past few weeks to talk to her, to contact her, she would take him back into her arms gladly. But he hadn’t…She knew him, knew that if he wanted to get in touch with her, he could. Whatever it took, he would find her if he truly wanted to talk to her, wanted her back in his life. But he clearly didn’t think she was worthy of his time or affections, of his trust.

            Love was nice and all that but without trust, it was rotten.

            She wanted to collapse, to roll into a tight ball right there on the floor and cry until she couldn’t breathe. But there was no use in that. Crying solved nothing, giving up made everything worse. Her only option was to pick herself up, stand up straight, and carry on like everything was fine until it became fine. She would deal with the pain when it arose, and taking some time away from London would help her gain some perspective.

            Or so she told herself.

            As she rode the tube back to her flat, sitting across from a couple who sat there looking content just holding hands made her want to throw up, or yell at them. She could’ve handled it if they’d been snogging but the mature appreciation of each other, the quiet contentment of simply sitting next to each other, holding hands, steady in the knowledge that their love sat next to them made her wish she was dead.

            “Oh, get a grip,” she muttered to herself, walking home from the station at a punishing speed.

            She distracted herself by listing off what she still needed to pack for her holiday. She had bought a brand-new bathing suit for the trip. She had stood in the shop for hours, wondering if she were brave enough for the skimpy two piece that would leave nothing to the imagination, but had opted for the more modest one piece that left the color of her bottom to the imagination at least. But she had splurged and bought herself short shorts, colorful tank tops with matching sandals, and accessories including rather large sunglasses and a floppy sun hat. She made a mental list of the books she would need to keep her company during her trip, the only piece of technology she was taking was her phone, only because it had all her music on there.

            Molly packed her suitcase and imagined herself meeting someone on the island. Someone big, muscular, tanned, with hair streaked blonde from hours spent in the sun, and eyes as blue as the sky. He would take one look at her and fall in love with her, and give himself freely to her, without doubting her at all.

            As she tried to give the fantasy more detail, she realized it was an impossible task. Her heart and soul belong to Sherlock, he was keeping her prisoner. She hated him with all her heart for throwing her away so easily, for leaving her without a backwards glance, for making her feel like she had to be the one chasing him. But all the same, the love she felt for him never left her…and she had a feeling she would never stop loving Sherlock.

            He was the love of her life, the love of her heart and soul.

            She wished it had been harder for him to walk away from her, had hoped that after all the time they spent together, after all they had lived through…

            She sat on the edge of her bed, rubbing her forehead and all the memories of the past six months flooded her. From the night he had shown up to weep in her arms, to the way he’d driven her mad in the kitchen when she’d been attempting to cook or bake, his inability to quietly watch telly falling silent only when his head was in her lap and her fingers in his hair, to the mornings he attempted to make the bed to impress her before jumping in the shower with her…in her mind’s eye, she saw clear as day the nights and days they had spent together in this very bed…She only had to close her eyes to see the way his delicious lips touched her nipples, feel his breath on her wet skin, his hair tangled and twined around her fingers as he suckled her. The heat that would be in his incredible eyes as he watched her, the wet, hot suction of his mouth on her nipples sending fissures of electricity down her spine…

            She wanted to jump out of the window.

            After she finished packing, she glanced outside to see her silent specter standing there, watching her flat. She thought it would’ve been a good idea to go out there, talk to him. Instead, she shut off all the lights in her flat and put on Nick Cave and the Bad Seed’s newest album, the Skeleton Tree. She curled up on the couch and listened to music.

            She tried not to think about how delicious his skin tasted…the way he would smile, his head thrown back in ecstasy, exposing the long column of his elegant throat as she kissed her way down from his lips, his chin…tracing his jawline with her lips and teeth…down his throat, tasting his Adam’s apple…trailing butterfly kisses over his chest…finding his nipples, using her tongue to trace a path lower and lower until he would groan her name, gripping her hair tight in his fist…lifting his torso off the bed to watch her…

            _Shit._

            Rational Molly kept reminding her that this was Sherlock. He was a self-professed sociopath, a junkie who tried to keep off smack by solving crimes. He was the man that had treated her like mud on the bottom of his shoe, who had repeatedly humiliated her out of sheer ignorance. He was the man who hadn’t understood why people had cried during his best man speech, he was the same man who had been confused when his best friend took offense to him having pretended to be dead for two years.

            Rational Molly knew that Sherlock had grown up convinced that emotions were silly, that they were something to be experienced and felt only by the lower categories of human. He was above it all, or so he had convinced himself. From the revelations of the past few months, it was becoming clear that the emotionless man before her had once been a boy who had felt completely, better than his siblings. The man who had committed murder for the sake of his friends had once been a normal boy with normal emotions and extraordinary intelligence. His ignorance of feelings was practiced to perfection, not borne out of nature.

            Trauma had forced those emotions into a cage, forced the little boy to transform into a man that was so convinced of importance of intelligence alone, he’d convinced himself that emotions, feelings were insignificant.

            Rational Molly knew all that.

            Heartbroken Molly however knew that she had been the one chasing him down all these years, she had been the one to patch him up, she had been the one to beg him to let her help him deal with whatever he was dealing with. For once, she wanted him to need her without her having to tell him so.

            As Nick Cave sang his “Girl in Amber”, she pretended that the tears flowing down her cheeks were for the song written by a heartbroken father, not because her heart had shattered along with her soul.


	5. Anthrocene

            John watched Sherlock pacing up and down the room, deep in thought. John had his laptop open in front of him, his phone next to him as he reviewed the notes he and Sherlock had compiled over their investigation into the cannibal.

            Well, the notes that Watson had made of Sherlock’s investigation. As it was, he felt stumped while Sherlock walked around the flat with The Look. So, John waited patiently for his friend to spring into action, and entertained himself by alternating between open tabs on his laptop and checking the blog.

            The Cannibal case had turned out to be more complicated than even Sherlock had anticipated. But the newest body that had turned up had been the turning point…why, John wasn’t exactly sure but Sherlock had changed after that. His attitude towards the case, the one-track mentality had spurred him onwards. He was acting like a bloodhound having caught a scent. The fact that the newest victim’s heart had been removed so precisely had convinced Sherlock that the cannibal had made a mistake, that the trail leading to Dr. Leonardo was becoming clearer. What the mistake was, again John wasn’t quite sure but he trusted his best friend to figure it out, and eventually tell him and Lestrade.

            “You know where she went off to,” Sherlock said rather abruptly, stopping in front of John, looking down at him with such intensity that John had to squint.

            “Who?” John asked with a lifted brow.

            “My…” Sherlock cleared his throat, “Molly Hooper. You know where she went on her sudden holiday.”

            “Yes I do,” John smiled, going back to flittering between tabs on his laptop, “so?”  
            “You have to tell me.”

            “Oh but aren’t you the brilliant Sherlock Holmes? Can’t you just figure it out yourself?” John knew he was angering his best friend but he found himself rather enjoying the torture session on behalf of Molly.

            “I’m sure Lestrade knows too,” there was bitterness in his tone as he dropped his rather tall frame into the leather seat, “she’s told the whole bloody world.” John had noticed that he’d started putting on weight when he’d been with Molly, because she’d actually forced him to eat like a normal person. But he’d been losing it again, his face was looking gaunt.

            “I do wonder why that is,” John muttered, “you’re the world’s greatest detective. You can distinguish between 456 different types of ash at last count, you can identify an airline pilot by his right thumb, and a narcoleptic by his shoes. Like I said, figure it out. Why do you think she hasn’t told you? Come on then. Deduce!”

            “Oh you’re insufferable,” the bitterness in Sherlock’s tone was poisonous now as he looked at the fireplace, frowning at it like it contained all the answers to the universe.

            “Why does it matter where she went?” John put his laptop away, hoping he could get Sherlock to see reason when it came to Molly.

            “She’s…she’s the best at Bart’s, I need her here to deal with this cannibal,” he answered, trying hard to sound casual about it but he was anything but. Not being with Molly was killing him but he was too stupid to realize it.

            “Right,” John rubbed his face with his hands, “and being away from her isn’t killing you slowly, and you didn’t rip your own heart out when you walked away from her because you’re a walking, talking advertisement for idiocy. _Right_. Got it.”

            But Sherlock just stared into the fireplace with an intensity that bordered on terrifying. If looks could kill or inflict injury, the fireplace would have exploded a while ago.

            “You bloody idiot,” John shook his head, “you have a woman who loves you, who puts up with you, who adores you _because_ you’re an annoying, arrogant pisspot but you walked away from her. _You_ walked away from _her._ You ripped both your hearts out because you couldn’t handle the fact that you were finally _happy_. I don’t understand you, at all. I would give anything to have Mary back. And you’re…you’re wasting your life Sherlock.”

            “She ripped my heart out….” Sherlock muttered, “ripped it out…Ripped. My. Bloody. Heart. Out.” Sherlock kept repeating it through gritted teeth, running his hair through his hair and gripping it tightly. For a moment John was worried that Sherlock had finally come to grips with what happened between him and Molly, that he was about to have an emotional break through.

            “That’s it!” Sherlock jumped up from the chair, punching the air in enthusiasm, “that’s it! She was his girlfriend! He removed her heart from her chest because she was breaking up with him. They were romantically involved! If we can connect her to Leonardo, we can prove that he killed her. Don’t you see! We weren’t able to connect the other victims because he was so careful in picking them but he got sentimental. He loved her, and she broke up with him. Or,” Sherlock gasped, “he asked her to marry him and she refused him. She broke his heart so he took hers. That’s why he was so careful with her! But not careful enough. Sentiment! Kills you every time.”

            “Utter ass,” John shook his head, following Sherlock out of the flat, so disappointed in his friend that he could barely keep himself from headbutting him or pushing him down the stairs.

 

            Molly’s flight was delayed. She sat in the airport terminal with her luggage at her feet and a frightful London sky outside. She had relented and brought her laptop with her, having carefully examined it for any tracking devices, and had been watching her favorite miniseries, waiting for the weather to clear up so she could get on with this holiday. But she tried to keep up her spirits by watching _Parade’s End_ , marveling at the brilliance of the actor that played Christopher Tiejens, wishing she’d fallen in love with someone like him.

            She’d lost count of how many times she had watched the fog scene… “Damn Mountby!” was a line written into her very soul. She wondered if Sherlock would ever be so intense in his love for her.

            The airport was mostly deserted at this time of night. It was her and a few other passengers who were supposed to be on the flight to Singapore, mostly men in business suits who were more frustrated than her. She’d chosen a seat at the gate facing the airport runway, with a row of seats all to herself, watching the airplanes and ground crew when she could tear her eyes away from the movie. She had a tepid cup of tea beside her, and she started to feel just the smallest bit content with her situation. There was something about airports that had always appealed to her, the coming and going of people, the different purposes that filled every individual’s trip. Always a people watcher, the airport seemed to be the perfect place to do so.

            Her thoughts were interrupted when a gentleman sat down a few seats away from her. His long overcoat startled for her a second, her heart fluttering as she thought it was Sherlock dropping in next to her. But it wasn’t. The man who sat down was obviously a business man, wearing a perfectly tailored suit beneath the overcoat, complete with a waistcoat. He had brown hair, short at the bottom, longer on the top and parted to the side with piercing brown eyes. He was dressed exquisitely, and caught her staring at him…

            _Damn it Molly_.

            “Waiting on the flight to Singapore too?” he leaned over to ask.

            The poor man must have been terrified of being stared at by a strange woman. “Erm, yah,” she managed to answer, not sounding completely foolish, “you?”

            He smiled just as she realized what he had asked her, “yes. I have business in New Zealand, and this was the only flight I could get.”

            Molly wondered whether she should mention that New Zealand was her next stop after Singapore on her way to Samoa, but she decided against it. After years of having worked with the police, paranoia was bound to set in. “Are you going for business?” she asked him, having always found small talk to be the bane of her existence. And suddenly Sherlock’s voice drifted into her mind, telling her to never try to make small talk.

            “Yes. I am attending a conference for international criminal profilers,” he told her, with an accent that she couldn’t quite place. It was rather musical and interesting to listen to, almost hypnotic.

            “Oh that sounds…interesting?” she chuckled, “have to imagine there will be lots of fascinating conversations in that room!”

            The stranger chuckled, “I imagine so,” he leaned across the empty seat with an extended hand, “I’m Dr. Jonathan Leonardo.”

            “Molly Hooper,” she shook his hand, “doctor too. Dr. Molly Hooper.”

            “Doctor of medicine?” he asked with a lifted brow, sounding impressed.

            His name had stirred something in her memory, and she knew she had heard it recently. But going by the fact that he was a criminal profiler, she convinced herself that it had been mentioned in some article she’d read. The world of criminal investigations and investigators was rather small, and the number of profilers were limited. “Pathologist actually,” she told him, turning in her seat so that she could talk to him more comfortably.

            “Ah, do you work with the authorities?” he asked, leaning forward. There was something in his eyes, a frankness, a brutal honesty that she found herself trying to appreciate. His eyes scanned her from the top of her head to her shoes, not missing anything, as if x-raying her and snatching her secrets from her. When Sherlock did it, it was disarming and terrifying to behold, like the ocean. But the way this man’s eye traveled…she felt as if she needed a bath.

            But that was probably because she was suddenly overloaded with memories of Sherlock’s eyes the first time he had seen her naked, the way he had dropped to his knees before her and kissed her so intimately until her legs had buckled and she had collapsed on the floor in front of him.

            “Yes, sometimes,” she told him with a smile, sipping her tea.

            “Please allow me to buy you a fresh cup of tea,” he stood up gallantly, taking her cup from her, “the least I can do to make you comfortable is give you some warmth.”

            “Oh, uhm, yes, thank you,” she smiled up at him, telling herself that whatever apprehension she felt was because her heart was currently living outside her chest, in possession of a certain consulting detective.

            The same consulting detective who always stated that gut instincts have to be trusted, because they are just bits of information that our brain can’t process quickly enough.


	6. Bellringer Blues

            Sherlock Holmes locked himself in his mind palace and threw away the key.

            There had been a constant state of chaos in his mind the past few weeks, an uncharacteristic hum that sounded suspiciously like the word “shit” repeated over and over again, in a voice that was not dissimilar to his own.

            The repeated word and the cacophony it brewed in his mind had attached itself to him when he had stepped away from Molly’s warmth that night. His ability to compartmentalize those excess voices and emotions, to find the useless humming in his mind and shove it into a room seemed to have found a glitch.

            There was a fly in the ointment, a crack in the lens…

            It felt as if no matter how hard he tried to keep those thoughts and emotions at bay, no matter how many mental doors he slammed on them, how many techniques he used as keys to keep them in those rooms, he could not succeed. They always found a crack in the walls to escape, or windows that he had left open where they seeped out from, to remind him that he was an addict, and he needed a fix.

            An addictive personality was simply a set of traits that defined an individual by making them predisposed to becoming addicted to certain things. Drugs, alcohol, even people. With an addictive personality, the person engaged in whatever vice they chose, be it gambling, shopping, online pornography, or recreational drugs, not just because they enjoyed it but because they had to. People with this personality type are often unable to contain impulses and cannot handle delayed gratification, moving from one addiction to the next with the mistaken belief that whatever mental anguish they were running from would be fixed by the next addiction.

            Sherlock had been aware that he had an addictive personality long before he could consciously remember. His childhood obsession with pirates had seamlessly flowed into what his brother called his Shakespeare phase, eventually leading to an addiction to caffeine, nicotine, drugs of all shapes and sizes, and solving bizarre, sometimes inexplicable crimes.

Lately, that addiction had been being with Molly.

The addiction _had_ been Molly.

Molly’s crooked smile.

Molly’s wholehearted laughter.

Molly’s little snorts when she giggled.

Molly’s eyes.

Molly’s kisses.

Molly’s arms.

Molly’s sighs.

Molly’s fingers in his hair.

Molly…Molly…Molly…

It had been so easy to fall into her arms, to fall into the wealth of love that defined her. His encounter with his sister had left him feeling as if he had lost any sense of balance, as if he was taking a dive off the Reichenbach. Whatever equilibrium he had had that night, that last bit of push that had helped him save John Watson, had seeped out of him like steam the second Eurus had been escorted back to Sherrinford by the police.

In his mind palace, he relived the scene. Saw John wrapped up in the police’s shock blanket, looking at him with concern. Saw the way he had nearly crumpled, his equilibrium finally leaving him. John had grabbed one elbow, Lestrade the other one, keeping him from going down on his knees in the dirt. Everything had hit him in that moment…Eurus, Victor, the fact that he had been willing to kill Mycroft to save John Watson, the fact that innocent people had died on his sister’s whim…That he had put Molly Hooper through hell.

He and John had run to the hospital to see Mycroft, with John Watson pretending very hard that he hadn’t noticed Sherlock’s shaking hands or the constant stream of tears that were running down his face. He hadn’t been able to speak to his brother, had just watched visually verified that Mycroft was in one piece and hailed a cab to Molly’s place.

Sneaking into her apartment had been woefully easy. He had thought about knocking or calling ahead but he’d had no energy, and he hadn’t been sure that he wanted her to know he was there. A part of him had been content to just spend the entire night watching her sleep, like a damned stalker. But she had woken up, and seeing her, feeling her eyes on him had ended whatever momentum that had carried him that night. It was as if his mind had realized that this was Molly, that he could trust her with his heart and soul and his mind…Because she’d lived in his heart and soul and mind for so long. They had belonged to her long before either of them had realized it.

There was a special suite in his mind palace where the memories of that night lived. The suite was similar to a stateroom he had stayed in once in Florence, filled with light and fresh blooming flowers. His memories of Molly that night and the night after lived in that space in his mind.

And there she was, he marveled, watching as she held him, as she supported him. He heard the endearments that flowed from her heart to her mouth and soothed his soul.

Saw how he had clung to her for dear life, saw the desperation…

“Oh Sherlock, you’re slipping,” the voice had a slight echoing effect in his mind, the specter that it belonged to standing just outside the door, unable to come inside to taint his Molly suite. “Look at you, so sentimental. Obsessed with another gold fish, absolutely gushing over this…this…” Moriarty sighed and Sherlock didn’t need to turn around to see that he shrugged, “I don’t even know what to call her. This little pathologist. I mean if you were going over Irene Addler, fine but this little goose?”

Sherlock took a deep breath, knowing that this was his own imagination, this was his own memory, his own thoughts…So why was he saying all these things?  
            “You _know_ why,” Moriarty sounded exasperated, “she’s boring. She’s a scrap of ordinary anyone can pick up. What makes _her_ so special, that you’re in here moping around? Honestly, I keep waiting for you to start composing poetry about her. I mean, just look at the room you’ve given her. The Hall of Mirror’s in Versailles looks like somebody’s beaten up old flat compared to this,” Sherlock turned around to see an expression of disgust appear on Moriarty’s face, “ugh! You’ve even got me waxing poetic about her. You’re in love. So boring. ORDINARY Sherlock. You’re ORDINARY!”

Everyone fell in love some time or another. It was the most basic aspect of human nature, this aversion to being alone, or living a life without someone to experience it with. Biology and evolution explained this need to be with someone, always with someone…After all, loneliness, _being_ alone, meant certain death for their human ancestors. The biological need to mate, to form a close bond with another member of the species guaranteed the continuation of the blood line, as well as strengthening family’s and tribes by creating more protection from outsiders. The emotions that attached themselves to sex and the creation of new life was just an evolutionary trick to ensure more copulation and more children to add to the bloodline, and to the bodies that could be used as protection.

But as Moriarty’s words sunk in, he had to wonder…The need was an ordinary part of being a member of the genus homo erectus, and whether it was a tedious part of existence or not didn’t matter right now. What did matter was the fact that his Molly…Molly Hooper was in no sense ordinary.

She was extraordinary.

She walked through rooms filled with cadavers, cadavers that were once living, breathing human beings who had more than likely died in violent ways, and managed to crack terribly cheesy jokes without forgetting to treat each body with respect. He had watched her weighing various body parts and snorting with laughter at her own joke, had watched her comb through a body’s hair reverently, looking for any bits of evidence. He didn’t think anyone else would be capable of munching on an apple while digging into the contents of someone’s bowels.

Molly was ditzy and forgetful. He couldn’t keep count of how many times she’d forgotten her jacket while it was raining outside, or had to run back inside because she’d forgotten her bag or files. She was a terrible cook but could bake the most delicious cakes and cookies. She loved staying in Friday nights with a bottle of wine instead of going out, knew all the lines to any given Monty Python movie or sketch, and was so ticklish that all he had to do was wiggle his fingers and she’d dissolve into laughter. She couldn’t hold a tune to save her life but she rapped like a professional, and would definitely give Eminem a run for his money. She slept face down, with her face turned just enough to be able to breath, making humming sounds in her sleep, making sure to cover him in the middle of the night so he wouldn’t get cold.

            Yet with all that…she saw things that other people missed. She had understood his fears, saw his concern when everyone else had been unable to. She had helped him solve a complicated problem and asked for nothing in return, not even praise or gratitude. She sat with him in the lab, even if she were tired beyond comprehension, because she knew it helped him talk to someone or something when working something out.

            When she wrapped her arms around him, he felt as if she took all his weaknesses and replaced all his doubts, all his shortcomings with strength. She was stronger than him in more ways than he could count.

            She wasn’t a scrap of ordinary, not his Molly. She was an extraordinary creature that somehow saw fit to love him as much as she did. The problem wasn’t Molly, it was his own inability to comprehend why she loved him, why she thought he was worthy of her.

            That night, he had wanted nothing more than to sink himself deep inside her, sink himself in everything that she was, make love to her and let his body tell her how much he adored her. Bathe in her light until it banished all the darkness from his life.

But she had terrified him…she knew him too well, knew how to coax him out of his shell. The power she had over him was disconcerting, dangerous. The lessons he had lived through all his life was that anyone with any power over him, always hurt him.

And a part of him had decided that it would be best to walk away from her, from all her love, before she could hurt him. Another part of him knew that Molly would never intentionally harm anyone or anything, especially him.

“Oh, you are an idiot Sherlock,” Moriarty blew a raspberry, “you left the girl because you thought she might leave you? That’s paperback romance bad.”      

Walking away from her that night had been painful, with every molecule and fiber within him screaming to stay with her, to stay there, to let himself be consumed in the bright, absolving fire that was Molly. But he had walked away from her, leaving her on her knees…he had collapsed outside her flat door, right there on the sidewalk, dry heaving and walking to rush back inside, beg her forgiveness…But he hadn’t.

            He had walked to Baker street that night, and had decided that the best thing for both of them would be to pretend that the past few months had never happened. He’d immediately started sifting through the emails to find the cases that would take up his time, that would distract him enough so that he wouldn’t die of agony from missing her.

            “This mind palace used to be such a fun spot!” Moriarty was whining now, “solving murders and kidnappings, riddles that no one bothered with and now were all goo-goo eyed for this…scrap of extraordinariness. Sherlock Holmes is love is _not_ my cup of tea.”

            Sherlock walked to the bed he had given Molly in his mind palace and saw her sitting there, the way she usually did, wearing a baggy t-shirt in lieu of proper pajamas, hair up in a bun, her face scrubbed free of any make up. She would always sit Indian style on what had become her side of the bed, working on her laptop, her graceful fingers typing furiously, chewing on that delicious bottom lip, with a slight frown as she concentrated. He knew if he kissed her, she would taste like spearmint toothpaste, and she would feel soft and warm.

            Sherlock knew that if he kissed Molly, she would taste like home.

            He walked towards her, and she looked up at him with that glorious smile, brighter than the sun or any other celestial body capable of producing light, “hey love,” she grinned, reaching her hand out to him, “where’ve you been?”

            Moriarty was outside the door still, attempting to draw Sherlock away from her, making as much noise as he possibly could before falling completely silent, and disappearing.

Molly was here now, and there was no room in Sherlock’s mind for distraction.

He held out his hand for her and she laced their fingers together, setting her laptop aside as she pulled him down. Molly leaned back to rest against the headboard, her torso propped up as she drew him down on top of her, letting him rest his weary head on her chest. He listened to her heartbeat against his cheek, her skin soft as gossamer, sighing as he felt her light touch on his jaw, his cheeks, before she sunk her fingers into his hair.

            “My love,” she sighed against the top of his head as he sunk his body on the mattress, resting against her warmth as she wrapped her legs around him, drawing him impossibly close to her, “where have you been?” she asked again, her fingers tracing the collar of his coat.

            “I got lost without you,” he murmured against her skin, closing his eyes as the excess noises in his head disappeared, as he finally found peace there in her arms, “so lost without you.”

            He felt her smile as she rubbed strands of his hair between her fingertips, “but I’m never far away,” she told him, “I’m always within reach. If you need me, all you have to do is tell me.”

            “I don’t like needing you,” he told her, “I hate that it hurts to breath without you. I hate that everything that I do, everything I feel, see, hear, touch, I think about you, and how you would react. Whether you’d smile or frown, whether you would react with excitement or boredom. I see a bird flying in the damned sky and wonder if you would enjoy seeing it fly.”  
            “GODDAMN IT! SHERLOCK!” someone hit him hard in the shoulder with something rather heavy and he opened his eyes to find John Watson’s angry face inches from his, “we’ve got a problem.”

 


	7. Abbatoir Blues

            “Isn’t that what Jim Moriarty said to you, that time at the pool? ‘I’ll cut the heart out of you’?” Watson asked, trying to contain his own nervousness as he hovered over Sherlock. Predictably, his friend’s face had remained calm and passive as he read the email that had been sent by a JLeo@IFCP.net.

            “No,” Sherlock breathed, staring at the email with narrowed eyes, his hands steepled under his chin, “Moriarty said ‘burn’, this said ‘cut’.”

            “Oh, my mistake,” John scrubbed his face roughly with his hands, astonished that Sherlock didn’t even seem remotely horrified by the email sent from someone they were pretty sure was a cannibal. In fact, they had gathered enough evidence that Scotland Yard had issued a warrant for his arrest. And because the individual known as Dr. Jonathan Leonardo was in fact a transplant from Amsterdam, INTERPOL had issued a red notice regarding Leonardo, among other international policing agencies.

            And to get an email from a known cannibal talking about cutting out body parts…normal people would’ve been on edge. Sherlock however had been monosyllabic at best since John had managed to draw him out of his mind palace. Normally, Sherlock was moody and quick to thrown temper tantrums if he was interrupted while he was in his mind palace, but this time, he’d been reserved, quiet.

            “What now?” John asked, hearing the impatience in his own voice. The back of his neck had started prickling, as if there was someone standing behind him, a looming figure of doom and gloom just beyond his comprehension.

            “He obviously doesn’t mean my heart,” Sherlock murmured after a few moments of John pacing while he stared at the email, “if he had wanted to cut my heart out he would’ve done so already. He’s smart enough to break into a secure government building in the middle of day, murdering and cannibalizing someone in broad daylight with countless police and agents in the building. If he wanted to consume my heart, he could have easily accessed Baker street and subdued me. Or intercepted me during my night walks or on my way to Bart’s or somewhere he knew I regularly frequent. He has known of my pursuit for the past several weeks, he has had ample opportunity to attack me. This threat is not intended for me.”

            “Christ!” John hissed, stopping dead in his track, his heart thundering in his chest as he looked at Sherlock.           

            Sherlock’s entire body seemed to go limp, his shoulders sagging, the expression on his face lax with horror, “Molly,” he whispered.

           

            Lestrade drove like a maniac through London traffic, honking his horn as he drove with one hand and held the phone against his ear with the other. “But Molly’s on holiday isn’t she? She’s safe! We’ve just to phone the hotel she’s at and warn her not to step out by herself until we get someone over to her.”

            “You don’t understand,” John’s usually calm voice was now high pitched with anxiousness, “I phoned the hotel she’s supposed to be at and she wasn’t there, she never checked in.”

            “She wasn’t on the flight to Singapore either. We traced her itinerary from here to her destination,” Sherlock’s voice had dropped an octave, his voice so low and he was talking so fast that Lestrade could barely understand him, “she checked in for her flight at Heathrow but never boarded. The flight was delayed but she never presented her ticket when the airline finally got it together. _She’s still in London_ ,” he hissed through the phone.

            “Christ,” Lestrade nearly avoided hitting a double decker as he rounded the corner on two wheels, “how do you know he has her? What if she just went to her parents’ instead?”

            “John phoned them, they haven’t heard from her either,” Sherlock’s voice practically garbled now, and Lestrade hung up, throwing the phone in the passenger seat, trying not to imagine what it would be like to find Molly’s body torn apart.

 

             


	8. Cannibal's Hymn

Molly was shivering.

            She strained her eyes to see through the darkness that surrounded her, blinking repeatedly as her brain tried to figure out whether her eyes were open, if they were covered with something to create such horrid darkness, or if she were in a space where darkness surrounded her so completely. She knew that she was lying flat on her back, her arms and legs strapped down tightly with a restraint on her forehead that kept her from lifting her head. She also knew that she was naked from the waist up, could feel the two halves of her t-shirt lying open, as if the material had been split in half. Molly also knew she was no longer wearing a bra.

            She tried to take a deep breath and smelled earth, as if she were somewhere underground. She tried to listen to noises, anything that could help her figure out where she could possibly be but she only heard deafening silence. Her last memory was of the airport, and drinking tea that was so hot it had burned her tongue...

            _Ok old girl, you’re in trouble_ she assured herself. Trying to calm down, she took stock of her body, treating it as if it was a piece of evidence brought into Bart’s for her to examine. Nothing was broken, nothing hurt except the small of her back from having her legs stretched out straight for so long. She could feel no sting that would indicate that she’d been cut in anyway, she wasn’t dizzy so there hadn’t been a blow to the head. Her thoughts were lucid, her memory sharp except for the bit between the tea and here but she suspected there had been something in the tea.

            _So this is how it ends_ , she found herself thinking, consciously shutting her eyes so that she was sure the darkness was because they were closed.

            She would fight if she could, but she was blind and powerfulness the way she was strapped down. There was nothing in her pockets that would help her cut through her restraints, and even if she had, the material was so thick she wouldn’t be able to loosen it without drawing attention. If her attacker came into the room, she would bite and scratch and kick as much as she could, she’d even headbutt him if her head wasn’t tied down.

            But she knew that it was time to go, that it was finally happening. This was the end…her end.

            She gathered all her thoughts and conjured up her love, her Sherlock. She saw his beautiful face, those cheekbones so sharp that they cast shadows, those mercurial eyes that were capable of so much affection and terrible moments of ice, that tall, lean body that was warm to the touch…warmer than anyone could’ve guessed. She heard his voice, saw his smile, traced the perfect peaks of his upper lip, tasted his plump lover lip, felt the shadow of his beard against her bare breasts on those mornings he wouldn’t bother to shave.

            Her love.

            Her Sherlock.

            In her mind’s eye she saw him that night he’d come to Bart’s, heard his words for the millionth time in her memory. _“If I wasn’t everything that you think I am, everything that I think I am, would you still help me?”_

            Her love…

            With all heart, with all her soul, with every fiber of her being she prayed in that moment that her death not tear her Sherlock apart, that whichever God heard her fervent prayers gave him the strength to live with her death in peace. She kept repeating in her mind: I love you Sherlock, I love you Sherlock, I love you Sherlock, with the hope that it somehow moved out of her body and mind, out into the universe to touch him.

            “Ah, Dr. Hooper, the pathologist from Bart,” the sly voice slithered out from the darkness, gripping her heart like a vice, “Sherlock Holmes’ little girlfriend. Thank you so much for waiting, I just had to take care of a few things upstairs,” the tone of the voice suggested that they were two ordinary people, having a perfectly ordinary conversation at the doctor’s office, “now, we may begin your procedure.

            _I love you Sherlock_.

 


	9. From Her to Eternity

            It took them 18 hours, but Sherlock had finally figured out where Leonardo’s hideout was.

            18 hours of nonstop work, no sleep, no food, just a drive to find Molly Hooper before it was too late.

18 hours that had even brought down Mycroft to help them look, who kept sneaking glances filled with concern at his younger brother.

            John had never seen Sherlock like this. He didn’t talk, only opening his mouth to relay information. He wasn’t cocky or arrogant about the impossible pieces of information he was able to deduce from the airport, Leonardo’s office and apartments, and Molly’s own apartment. He swayed when he was standing, could barely walk straight he was so weak, and any effort by John to get him to eat something was met with stony silence. The only thing Sherlock cared about was finding Molly, and John dared not think of the state they would find her in.

            His friend hadn’t even been this silent that night at Musgrave, talking endlessly as he tried to figure out the puzzle that eventually led him to find John and Euros. But Sherlock was completely silent now…

            Tears stung John’s eyes but he refused to let them fall, refused to think of Molly no longer existing in the world…She had become like a sister to him, his confidant, his touchstone after Mary had died. He didn’t want to imagine what Sherlock was feeling, because he knew all too well.

            But going by the grim expression on his face, the grimness of his mouth, the set of his jaw, Sherlock had receded deep into his mind palace and found that special room that had given him the strength to shoot Magnussun.

            When they arrived at the house, Sherlock didn’t wait for the police or secret service that Mycroft and Lestrade had brought with them. With a single goal of finding Molly, he charged inside with John following him, guns blazing.

            Five minutes searching the house and they couldn’t find her or Leonardo, frustration and terror for Molly growing with each passing second. John’s frustration was mounting and even Mycroft was becoming anxious, “MOLLY HOOPER!” he yelled, walking from room to room with a gaggle of armed men with him, “DOCTOR HOOPER!” Greg was cursing and kicking every door violently, knowing that every moment they didn’t find her meant that Leonardo escaped further away, and their pathologist neared death.

            Sherlock was standing in the middle of the kitchen, straight as an arrow with his hands buried in his hair, pulling it as if it would help him think faster, better. His lips were moving and John wasn’t completely convinced that he wasn’t praying. He and the other two gathered around him, waiting for him to direct them, to say something, anything that would get them to their next step.

            Suddenly, his pale eyes opened wide, “the kitchen’s too small.”

            “What?” Greg blurted out.

            “ _The kitchen’s too small_ ,” Sherlock repeated with a hiss, grabbing the axe one of Mycroft’s agents had used to break down the doors that had been locked. With a terrifying flurry of fury and strength, he wheeled the axe into the wall, tearing through.

            John saw it then too. The damned kitchen _was_ too small, it should have extended at least another ten feet from the pantry. There was a hidden room between the walls…With another swing he tore open the rotting wood in the walls. The police came quickly and helped clear the debris, and no one seemed to mind being covered in dust as they hacked through. Sherlock threw himself into the room as soon as the hole was big enough.

            And as long as he lived, John Watson would never forget the terrified, shaking, panic stricken voice when Sherlocked called out, “JOHN!”

            As soon as John entered the room, his legs nearly gave out. He was transported back to the aid stations and make shift hospitals he’d worked at on the battlefield, the horrors of Kandahar had suddenly been transferred to this old Edwardian mansion on the outskirts of Cambridge. “Everyone stay outside, no one comes in here unless they’re a medic,” he shouted through the wall.

            “What is happe--“ Mycroft had been about to enter but John stopped him.

            “Stay outside, contact the hospital, have a thoracic unit at the ready for when we bring her in. Tell the medics to come in here with their full surgical kit,” he commanded and forced his legs to move, to move him towards Molly.

            Sherlock had forced himself back against the wall, barely breathing or blinking, his entire body screaming the fact that he didn’t want to be there, didn’t want to see this but couldn’t leave her by herself. “No no no no this isn’t happening…this isn’t happening…Molly…my Molly…this isn’t….this isn’t happening. She can’t….she can’t be de…she can’t leave me here like this…”.

           “She’s alive,” John told him in a voice as steady as he could manage, his eyes scanning the monitors that she was attached, his fingers finding her faint pulse. He knew there was no use in talking sense to Sherlock, knew that whatever assurances he gave his best friend wouldn’t be heard. John knew the panic too well, remembered too well the way blood thundered in your ears when you looked at your loves lifeless body, “just barely. Once the medics are in here, we’re going to close her chest and take her to the hospital. I can’t see what damage there is but just looking, he hasn’t done any permanent damage to her.”

            “He split her open,” Sherlock breathed, “ _he split my heart open_.”

            “She’ll be all right Sherlock, she will live. I promise you,” he whispered.

            When the medics entered the hidden room, both of them stopped to marvel at the horror before them but recovered quickly enough.

            She was on surgical gurney, attached to a heart rate monitor with various IV’s attached to her arm, intubated, the beeping of the monitor faint and too far between. He had cut open her chest, lifting her ribcage to expose her beating heart to them all. There were red marks around her mouth, as if it had been forced open and stretched to the point of tearing, which meant she’d been fully conscious when he’d intubated her. Her knuckles were bruised and her fingernails were red with blood from where she’d scratched her attacker. But for some reason, what broke his heart was the way her long brown hair hung limply off the table.

            John had never seen anything like it, it was a scene straight of a horror movie, to see one of his closest friends lying like that…her heart exposed, beating…

            But John tried not to think about who she was, and what she had endured, what her eyes must’ve seen. He worked fast with the help of the medics, who helped him close her chest quickly, knew that once back in the hospital she would be x-rayed and studied in detail to ensure he hadn’t missed anything, or that anything was permanently damaged inside her. If the universe had any kind of compassion, Molly would walk away with nothing but broken ribs.

            Sherlock remained with his back flat against the wall, his hands curled into fists pressed into the structure of the house, silent tears streaming down his face as he muttered to himself. And not once did his eyes stray from her face.

           


	10. Messiah Ward

            Silence.

            _Beep._

_Beep._

_Kish._

            Silence.

            _Beep._

_Beep._

_Kish._

Sherlock sat in the hospital at Molly’s bedside, not hearing anything except the beeping of the heart monitor and the breathing machine that pressed air into his love’s lungs. He sat in the uncomfortable plastic chair and didn’t realize he’d been there for ten hours, with her hand held tightly between his, pressed against his chest, branding her palm with kisses every five beats.

            Silence.

            _Beep._

_Beep._

_Kish._

            Molly’s family had come, her mother weeping at the sight of her unconscious daughter, but Sherlock hadn’t been able to let go of her hand. Molly’s mother, a jovial woman named Sarah, had kissed her daughter’s forehead, lamenting what had happened to her sweet little girl, and eventually was forced to get out of the room because she was overwrought with both relief and anger.

            Molly’s brother had entered the room, his eyes sweeping from his unconscious sister to the haggard detective that sat by her bedside, captivated by every unconscious tick of her facial muscles, seemingly measuring each rising of her breast with her breath. Mark had intended to yell and berate the detective for the danger he’d put his sister in but going by the expression on Sherlock Holmes’s face, nothing Mark said to him would hurt him as much as Sherlock’s own thoughts.

            John Watson fluttered in and out of the room like a bee, talking to her doctors, assuring Sherlock, trying to cajole him into eating or drinking something. “You’ll want your strength once she comes to,” Mrs. Hooper had tried, saving a tin of biscuits in front of his face, “you don’t want to faint, do you?”

            Sherlock had taken one biscuit and mashed it in his mouth, only to shut her up.

            Even Mycroft had visited Molly, to make sure that his brother was alright. Sherlock would later find out that Mycroft never actually left the hospital, but stayed in the waiting area to give Molly privacy.

            Sherlock kissed the inside of her palm and put it back against his chest, holding it there with both hands.

            Silence.

            _Beep._

_Beep._

_Kish._

            Silence.

            _Beep._

_Beep._

_Kish._

            Silence.

            The door opened and Sherlock expected John Watson to be sneaking back inside to check on his friend, but seeing his mother poke her head inside surprised him. He’d been so numb, incapable of feeling anything as he sat by his love’s bedside, that feeling the surprise overwhelmed him. “Mum,” he breathed, holding Molly’s hand tighter.

            “Oh, my darling boy,” she walked towards him, his father following her inside. She didn’t let him rise out of his chair, leaning down to wrap her arms around him, pressing him into her bosom the way only a mother could. She pressed a kiss to the top of his head.

            “Mycroft just told us about what happened,” his father stood across the room, a respectable distance away from Molly, his hands clasped in front of him.

            “How is she doing?” his mother asked, rubbing soothing circles on his back.

            “Same,” his voice cracked, the tears he’d been incapable of producing when he’d seen her split, eviscerated body finally flowing, “doctors are hopeful but they’re not sure what she was given, so they don’t know if and when she’ll regain consciousness.”

            “She’s a strong young lady,” his father said confidently, “I’m sure she will pull through this.”

            His mother nodded, still cradling her son’s head, “absolutely,” she agreed, “if she can handle someone like you, and be so intelligent that she convinced an entire country you were dead for two years, she’s strong enough to pull through this.”

            His father chuckled, “your mum’s been half in love with this girl since she helped you go into hiding!”

            They left not long after that, having coaxed him into eating one of the muffins Mrs. Hudson had brought in for him. John walked in after a while, sitting on the sofa that was on the other end of the room, flexing his jaw as he watched Molly’s monitor.

            “You alright?” Sherlock asked him quietly, tearing his eyes away from her long enough to look at his best friend.

            An expression of shock crossed his face but he quickly recovered, “why?”

            “Back there,” Sherlock cleared his throat, “when you had to…work…on her, that can’t have been easy,” his voice a garbled, cracking mess.

            “As long as she’s alive, I don’t care what I had to do,” John told him, “I’d wade through pools of blood as long as she lives.”

            “I…I…” Sherlock cleared his throat, “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that.”

             “Sherlock,” John cleared his throat, “why…did he keep her alive? I mean he went through great lengths to make sure the room was sterile, that she had all the proper medications, even matched her blood…He went through all that to make sure that that she’d y’know…stay alive, without much…permanent damage. That kind of surgery…he went through _great_ lengths.”

Sherlock kissed the inside of Molly’s Palm again, holding the contact, breathing in her scent. “She was never his victim,” he finally murmured against her skin, “just his medium to deliver a message. I was getting too close to him. He’s been doing this for at least a decade and no one’s suspected that he’s behind these gruesome murders, or suspected that he’s a cannibal. He started his work early, well before he went to medical school. When I got too close, he decided to get me the only way he knew how. Unlike Moriarty, he knew how much Molly counted. And Leonardo’s not wasteful. Like a hunter, he only kills to make use of the prey. He had no intention to kill Molly or c...” Sherlock cleared his throats again, “he had no intention to consume her. All his other victims he had personal connections with, they had done something to deserve it, in his mind. Everything he does is somehow justified. Molly…Molly never harmed him. I’m his view, she didn’t deserve being killed. That’s why he was so careful to keep her alive.”

“Jesus,” john rubbed his face with his hands, “Jesus. All this just to get to you?”

Sherlock nodded, clenching his jaw so tightly that John was worried he would dislocate it or crack the bone. “It seems that proximity to me results in kidnapping, near death experiences, or death itself.”

Neither said anything for a while, their eyes fixed on the monitor that beeped, telling them that Molly’s heart was still there, still beating, still fighting.

            “Listen Sherlock, I know you’d rather do anything but leave her but you should give her family some time alone with her when they come back tomorrow,” John told him softly, “I know how hard it is for you to leave her but her family should be with her too. I don’t know what kind of magic Mycroft used on the staff to let us even come into her room when neither of us are her family.”

            Sherlock nodded, “I’ll step outside,” he promised his friend.

            Lestrade opened the door then, poking his head through, “can I come in?” he asked demurely. Some part of Sherlock’s brain that still housed the sociopath had been fascinated by everyone’s reluctance to enter the hospital bed, to approach Molly. He couldn’t quite figure out whether it was out of respect or fear about what had happened to her body, what had been done to her, as if the darkness of the act was contagious…But the man within him, the creature that arose to a full roar whenever he was near his Molly, had been thankful that John had stopped anyone entering that room…he wouldn’t have been able to handle anyone else seeing his Molly in that gruesomely intimate condition.

            The detective inspector stood in the corner, as far away from Molly as he could. “We just got intel from Interpol, they’ve tracked Leonardo down to a hidey hole somewhere in Liverpool, apparently a boathouse on the Mersey. Figured you two would want come with me to arrest him?”

            Sherlock shook his head, “I can’t leave her. Besides, I farm out the arrests, not a part of my duty.”

            John nodded, “I’m going to stay here too. But keep us updated, would you?”

            Greg Lestrade nodded, and with a final glance at Molly, he snuck back out of the room, as quietly as he had come inside.

            After a few moments, Sherlock spoke in a voice so quiet that Watson wasn’t sure he hadn’t imagined it. “If I ever see that creature, if I went with Lestrade to arrest him, I would murder him. Tear his throat out where he stood. So you must keep me away from him, John. Under no circumstances should I ever be allowed anywhere near Jonathan Leonardo.”

            “Got it,” was the only response Watson could think of.

            But the question, who would keep Watson away from Leonardo?

            And a nagging part of Watson’s mind told him that Lestrade and even Mycroft couldn’t be trusted to be alone with that…creature.


	11. Rings of Saturn

            Two days later, Sherlock was asleep with his head on Molly’s stomach, right beneath the incision. He’d asked John Watson if he would be hurting her if he put his head on her stomach, afraid that he would be pressing down against her broken ribs, but he’d been assured that she would be fine. Sherlock pretended that the expression of astonishment on John’s face hadn’t been there.

            And so he slept on her, his mouth lax, half of his brain consciously monitoring the beeping of the machines and the rise and fall of her chest. John had done the math and figured that Sherlock hadn’t slept in about five days, essentially living off fumes.

They’d taken out her breathing tube yesterday, the doctors finally confident that she could breathe by herself, but still unsure when and if she would ever wake up.

            But early that morning, Molly’s brain finally started firing away, her synapses connecting, surging, enticing her back to the surface, back to consciousness. She opened her eyes, sure that she would see nothing but blinding darkness again and found herself confused when she was staring at a ceiling. She stared for a while, frowning and wondering what she was looking at, what that strange beeping was, and what the mass of black curls on her stomach could be.

            But as her synapses began to fire with more assertiveness and clarity, she figured that she was in some hospital somewhere, hooked up to an EKG machine and the lump of black curls on her stomach…

            Molly lifted her heavy, limp arm, the one free of the needles, and sunk her fingers into his hair, “Sherlock,” she sighed, her lips and the corners of her mouth hurt as if they’d been stretched, her throat so dry it felt as if she’d been breathing sand for ages.

            He jerked up, nearly falling out of his chair, having her heard her hoarse whisper somehow. “Molly,” he said wordlessly, blinking rapidly as if questioning whether she was really awake or if he was hallucinating her, “Molly,” he breathed again, lifting himself to sit on the edge of the bed, those pale eyes rimmed with red, become lakes of glass as tears welled up in his eyes.

            “You found me,” she whispered, “knew you’d find me,” she swallowed painfully, wincing.

            “Here,” he brought a glass of water to her lips, “sip,” he told her gently, using one hand to lift up her head gently, holding the glass so that she could take a sip.

            “Thank you,” she sighed as he let her sink back into the bed, “what happened?”

            “I’ll tell you later,” he promised, leaning down to press his forehead against hers, “all that matters is that you’re here, you’re with me,” he breathed with her for a few moments, enjoying the contact, relishing the knowledge that she was alive, that she was alright, “I want to kiss you but I’m afraid of hurting you.”

            She chuckled at that, lifting her hand heavily to cup his cheek, rubbing his bearded jaw with her thumb, “I don’t think I would mind,” she told him, her voice sounding foreign to her own ears.

            Sherlock lifted his head, a single curl dropped on his forehead, the shadow of his beard defining the sharpness of his cheekbones even more. He had lost weight, there was a tremor in his hands as he stroked her back, her shoulders, soothing her hair away from her face. There were black bags under his eyes, a dullness to them that she hadn’t seen since that night he stole into her room. He cupped her face in his palms now, “I’ll be gentle,” he promised, leaning down and brushing his lips so gently against hers, a sigh away. “Molly,” he said on a breath before kissing her completely, stealing her breath into his lungs, filling her.

            She kept her eyes open, afraid of closing them and descending into that terrible darkness. She opened her mouth to Sherlock, feeling his tongue sweep in and tasting her so thoroughly, the intimacy of the kiss somehow compounded by the fact that her eyes were open. With each stroke of his tongue, she felt herself return to her body, felt her soul fill every nook and cranny that she had fled from within herself. Only the taste of him kept her memories at bay, kept her from remembering…remembering…

            _“Just relax Dr. Hooper, it’ll all be over soon. Just close your eyes and think of Sherlock Holmes when he sees you like this. If they ever find you of course.”_

            Too quickly he pulled back, breathing heavily against her lips, “I nearly went mad thinking I’d lost you,” he told her, “I don’t...I don’t know what I would do without you in this world.”

            She smiled at his words, the sincerity in his eyes pinning her to the hospital bed. She curled her fingers into his hair, letting him settle in next to her though he was careful not to put any of his weight on her. But something in her expression changed as she processed his words, as she considered what he had just told her, the declaration of love, the value he had conferred onto her life… “Then why did you leave me?” she asked him gently, without any hint of accusation in her tone.

            He sat back, his expression one of disbelief that she had asked him that instead of letting him kiss her and hold her, welcome her back to life. But this was Molly, and she was extraordinary. “What do you mean?”

            “If you care so much about me Sherlock, why did you leave me?” she repeated, a single tear escaping her eyes, trailing down her cheek, “why did you leave me?” her voice was a hoarse whisper now, her voice cracking not just from the abuse her throat had endured but from the emotions that had began to bubble up to the surface.          

            “Mr. Holmes you pressed the call button?” the nurse crashed through door without ceremony, “Dr, Hooper! Oh dear you’re awake!” the nurse immediately rushed towards Molly and began checking various drips and IVs, “we’ll get Dr. Gloucester in here immediately to check you over,” the nurse clucked around Molly.

            Sherlock sank away from the bed under the pretense of giving the nurse and the doctor more room to work with as they checked Molly for any signs of anything that they hadn’t caught in her unconscious state. She didn’t glance at Sherlock, didn’t want to even acknowledge him in the room. She would’ve shut her eyes had she not been afraid of the encompassing darkness…

            He had pressed the button for the nurse to not talk to her. He called her his love, told her she meant the world to him, and yet he’d pressed that damned button instead of talking to her.

            As the doctor exposed Molly’s stomach, lifting the bandages, she stared straight up at the ceiling and pressed her lips together so tightly that they began to hurt, the marks around her mouth stretching. She wanted to scream, to cry out for him to take her hand, to kiss her and comfort her while the doctor and nurses crowded her, trapping her. She wanted him to be able to see, to understand that she was panicking, that she was going mad from it all.

            _“I’ve always been fascinated by hearts. We store all our emotions, all our feelings, all our attachments in the deepest recesses of our minds, and yet we have chosen the heart to symbolize it all. Is it because hearts are so essential to our physical existence? So then that means without our love, we wither and die.”_

            But her love had pressed the call button, and he remained a specter in the corner, watching the scene unfold with a bowed head as Molly finally let the tears stream down her face, “please! Please can I just…can you open the window? I can’t….I can’t breathe. This is too much. Too much,” her voice was hoarse and she felt deep humiliation at the frailty she heard in herself, her weakness somehow more humiliating because Sherlock was still in the room.

            _“But continuing our discussion about the differences in our brains and hearts, I’ve always wondered why a patient who is having surgery on his brain must be kept conscious and yet a patient receiving surgery on their most vital organ is put to sleep? I, for one, would be so interested in staying conscious while a surgeon cut open my chest and looked at my heart. So please, tell me what you are feeling as I proceed.”_

            After all, she had to be strong for Sherlock, she had to be the rock of Gibraltar in their relationship, his rock and touchstone, his champion…

            _“You may feel a slight twinge as I crack your ribs Dr. Hooper, but it cannot be avoided unfortunately.”_

            Molly wanted to weep.

            The nurses immediately followed her instructions, the doctor halting his examination to give her room to recover. But one of the nurses knew better, an older. woman with the kindest smile Molly had ever seen. She held Molly’s hand gently in her own, the same hand Sherlock had held for so many endless hours, “take a deep breath child and count to four, hold for a count of three, and let it out for another four,” she instructed Molly, “it will help you catch your breath,” after a few moments, the nurse patted Molly’s hand, “there now dear, all better.”

            Molly looked around the room, her need to hold his hand overwhelming her, overcoming her pride, her need for self-preservation… but he was gone.


	12. Carry Me

Time in the hospital passed as if it was on a bullet train that was trapped in molasses. There was urgency in everything that was being done for her and around her in the ICU, and yet everyone seemed to be moving with maddeningly slow speed. Molly had lost count of the hours she had spent watching the doctors and nurses whizzing past her door, the urgent codes that were called through the PA system in the hospital, and the occasional wails of family members when they lost someone…the cacophony of working with the living. 

It made Molly immensely glad she had chosen pathology instead of her original love in medical school, trauma.  

For the longest time, she had thought she would be an attorney, a lawyer who stood up for those who were too fearful or lacked the resources to stand up for themselves. She had trudged through adolescence thinking that she would one day be a great voice for the most marginalized members of society, that she would be there advocate, a Joan of Arc armed with a law degree. 

But when her father had gotten sick and she watched him withering away, watched how he had forced himself to seem strong and jovial even as death loomed closer and closer…she had decided to go into medicine. How could a healthy body be so one moment then turn on itself the next? What made the human body so invincible, so strong that it could withstand trauma such as a gunshot wound and yet fall to pieces because a few tiny cells had gone into business for themselves? And the more she had studied anatomy, the more she had become convinced that medicine was where she belonged, having arrived at that particular conclusion after spending two weeks pondering at the miracles that are human hands…. capable of making a fist to hurt someone or gently caressing a loved one’s cheek… 

After a classmate of hers had been found murdered brutally in an alleyway, Molly had decided she would give voice to those who no longer had the ability to speak for themselves. She had approached forensic pathology with the mentality of allowing the victims to tell their stories through their silenced, brutalized bodies.  

Her hand was subconsciously resting on her chest, over the bandage that hid the surgical scar, the tv humming to itself in the background as thoughts swept her away in a chasm of cold, bitter, and horrifying loneliness.  

What did her body say now? What had the doctors or the police seen when they had discovered her? She knew that Sherlock and John had been the first ones on the scene, she wondered what they had witnessed, what she must’ve looked like to them. What had been the rest of the room like? The rest of the house?  

She had lost consciousness almost immediately after Leonardo had made the cut into her chest. He had tried to keep her conscious, prodding her to tell him what she was feeling as used a scalpel to tear open her flesh. He had forced her to regain consciousness in time to hear him using the rib spreader to expose her heart. Her next faded memory was opening her eyes in the back of the ambulance with John Watson’s very concerned looking face, repeating her name. Molly had taken heart then, knowing she’d been found, and let herself sink into blissful nothingness. 

She had been around this kind of trauma long enough to know that her body wasn’t the only thing that needed to recover. The heaviest damage was to her mental state, but she was too exhausted to think about that, too tired of everything else to even think about the horrors she had experienced, to think about the terrible violation of her body, of her trust. 

Her eyes traveled from the open door to the empty seat next to her bed. She had a slew of visitors. Her family were a constant source of traffic in and out of the room, John was a frequent visitor who had hugged her gingerly and pressed a kissed to her forehead on a shaky breath, Lestrade had brought her flowers and sheepishly stood in the doorway before leaving hastily. She had received a bouquet of roses from Mycroft Holmes along with a basket filled with books and tea that he had thought she would enjoy. Her most surprising visitors had been Mr. and Mrs. Holmes, who spoke to her as if she was their daughter. And of course, Mrs. Hudson, who’s chatter filled Molly’s heart with such joy and distracted her so wonderfully.  

The one visitor that was absent from the crowds was the one that she wanted to be around the most...the one her heart and soul longed for...the stubborn man that broke her heart. Almost literally, if he was to be believed...the daft drama queen.

With a little help from John Watson and lots of cajoling, Molly was released three weeks after she'd been admitted. The doctors were hesitant, but she was insistent that she was fine, that her broken and cracked ribs would bother her sure, but she would rather convalesce at home. And she swore up and down that because she was a doctor, she would know the first signs of trouble and rush herself to the hospital if the need arose, God forbid. The hospital staff finally relented, and Molly found herself being swept home by her mother and two brothers.

Mrs. Hudson had gone ahead and gotten her flat ready for her, filling it with flowers and balloons welcoming her home. Her flat was made lovely and cheerful, filled with warmth only family and friends can bring to a space as rain and thunder rolled outside. Molly moved gingerly, sitting on the sofa and watching her family and friends flutter around, occasionally avoiding tackle hugs from little Rosie that would have send her back into the hospital. But the little girl quickly learned that if she gingerly wrapped her arms around Aunty M's neck, she was in the clear.

Molly let herself sink into the background, becoming a part of the wallpaper as everyone bustled around, whether cooking in the kitchen, passing around drinks, or just enjoying each other's company.

She longed for him, ached for her love desperately...but he didn't show, he left her sitting there, sipping her tea, and staring intensely at the floor...where he'd knelt in front of her so many nights ago, lifetimes ago...kissing her skin and murmuring the most beautiful words to her.

"Molly? You alright?" John had sat down next to her, frowning in concern as he touched her arm gently to pull her out of her thoughts.

She looked at him with a smile, "I'm fine," she assured him, "just a little distracted, as always."

"You miss him, don't you?" John let out an explosive breath, "I can't believe that...that...arrogant _sod_ isn't here. Waiting on you, hand and foot."

Molly chuckled at that, curling into herself as much as she could with her ribs and the stitches that tugged at her skin, she at least managed to tuck her legs beneath her without passing out. She nestled her face against the overstuffed sofa, watching Watson, "we both know him well enough by now not to be surprised. Plus, he's been through enough these past few months," she shrugged slightly, "it's Sherlock."

"That needs to stop being a bloody excuse for him," John rubbed his face roughly with his hands, "you can't honestly just excuse him like that. You...you went through something horrible, and you're sitting here protecting him?"

She chuckled again, knowing how absolutely ridiculous it sounded. But she was too tired to argue, too tired to tell John that Sherlock was exhausting her in more ways than he could imagine. Too tired to tell him how much it hurt that she needed to be on the brink of death for Sherlock to remember how much he loved her, how much he cared about her. "Special kind of crazy, aren't I?"

He leaned over to kiss her forehead, much like her brother had not an hour ago, "you are a saint Molly Hooper, he doesn't deserve you."

Soon, it was time for Rosie to go to bed and John left with Mrs. Hudson in tow. It took Molly over half an hour, but she convinced her mother and brother to leave too. She wanted to be alone, wanted to get over the fears that she knew were lurking in her heart about being alone. She'd been able to sleep in the hospital because she was surrounded by people, and nurses who snuck into her room at all hours to check her vitals and various fluids. But to be completely alone in her little flat, after all that...well, all the lights in the house would stay on, and the doors and windows would be quadruple checked. And between her ribs and the fear that lurked just beneath her stitches, she knew she wouldn't be getting any sleep.

But she smiled at her mom, kissed her cheek, and send them on their way.

Quadruple checking that she had locked the door after them.

She remembered how she felt after her first car accident. She’d been terrified of driving, but she knew she had to drive a car again sometime, and had chosen to sit get behind the wheel the next day. Her father had been astonished, worried sick about her bravado. But she’d done it, she had driven the car and gripped the steering wheel so hard her knuckles had turned white.

This was the same concept. Spend the night alone, get it over with.

Her little flat was blazing with light and sound from the music that played on a continuous loop, but the darkness descended on her nonetheless. Her knees were shaking and she wanted to vomit, the smallest sound making her jump, and she found herself walking along the walls because she couldn't stand to have any kind of emptiness behind her.

Blind panic threatened to bring her down to her knees as she forced her legs to move, one foot in front of the other...if she could just get to her room, to her bed...she'd force herself to fall asleep. Maybe she'd take some of the painkillers the hospital had given her and hope that blissful, ignorant unconsciousness would let her spend the night alone.

She wanted to cry as she stumbled through her apartment, the sound of a car outside making her physically jump so hard her ribs hurt. The rumble of thunder, the crack of lightening and the rolling sound it made froze her in her place because she thought it was the sound of the rib spreader Leonardo had used on her. She loved the sound of thunder and lightning but now, as every second pulled her deeper and faster into panic, the sound was one of torture.

But Molly dug deep inside herself, telling her that her fear was a band-aid and she just needed to get over it, just rip it off so she could move on with her life. Because honestly, what was she going to do? Move back in with her mother because she was afraid of the dark?

Because she'd been kidnapped by a cannibal who ripped her body apart to make a point?

She forced herself to take a deep breath, doing the box breathing Melisa, her nurse, had taught her. She tried to name objects in the room, looked at her hand and tried to distract herself by naming all the bones in her hand. She gave up when she got to the sixteenth bone without having once forgotten how frustratingly terrified she was.

One foot in front of the other...

One breath...

Good.

Next breath.

Breath.

_Breath._

Oh, God.

The room started to shrink around her, her insides boiling while her skin was clammy, cold. She was about to faint from fear.

Molly Hooper, who stared death in the face, jokingly rumored to be able to slam revolving doors and live in Chuck Norris's nightmares, was about to pass out from fear.

This wasn't happening.

This couldn't be happening...

She couldn't have survived everything in her life to come to this point...to get to this helpless, futile point where she couldn't even handle closing her eyes, when she couldn't enjoy the cacophony of a thunder storm.

When the front door opened, she could've sworn it creaked with the same forlorn squeal that filmmakers used to create suspense in horror movies. Her mind scrambled and she saw Leonardo standing there, wearing that perfect three-piece, color coordinated suit, his slick hair and slick voice...with a blood scalpel in his hand and hunger in his eyes.

But it wasn't.

Sherlock dropped to his knees in front of her after kicking the door shut, where she had crumbled down in tears and such terrible disappointment in herself. "Molly," he murmured gathering her in his arms, "shhh, it's alright," he told her, stroking her hair with his long, elegant fingers, his lips pressed against her ear as he murmured to her, "you're safe Molly, you're alright. I'm here," he told her, pulling her into his lap, "it's alright."

She clutched his wet coat in her fists, burying her head in his throat. "Oh Sherlock," she wept, overwhelmed by the desire to crawl into his coat, to surround herself with him, with everything he was to her, with everything she felt for him. She couldn't get close enough, pressing her torso as close to him as she could, broken ribs and stitches be damned. The fear and anxiety dissipated so completely, so suddenly when he'd arrived that she was left shaking, confused as relief and love overwhelmed her, making her dizzy. "Hold me," she wept, unable to find the tiny logical voice in her mind that told her not to rely on him, not to trust him to help her heal. But logic in the face of love, overwhelming, desperate love was a lost cause, "hold me," she begged.

"I am Molly, I am," his voice was soothing, the jaguar in the elegant cello purring into her ear, "feel my arms around you, feel my chest pressed against you," he told her, his hands rubbing circles on her back to keep her grounded, "there's nothing to be afraid of, you're safe with me."

She clutched him closer and he let her, rearranging his big body to hold her closer, helping her wrap her legs around his waist, "Sherlock," she moaned, finally crying, mourning for herself, for the violation she had endured, for the hurt she had been subjected to, for the broken heart and the broken promises that had rendered her numb for so long, "Sherlock," she cried, "I need you," she told him, "I need you to stay with me, to love me, to tell me everything's going to be ok. That it's over, that I don't have to be afraid of the dark," she pulled back to look into those incredible pale eyes, "tell me you won't leave me again," her voice was barely a whisper.

He cupped her cheek in his large hand, kissing her tears away,  "I'm here," he whispered, pressing a kiss to her cheek, "I'm here now," he brushed kiss along her jaw, "you're safe with me," he blessed her eyelids with kisses, "you don't have to be afraid of the dark," he kissed the tip of her nose, "I won't let anything hurt you," he promised as he brushed the gentlest of kisses against her lips, "I'm here, my Molly," he finally kissed her, slowly, languidly, using his tongue to open her mouth for him and sweeping in to taste her, to draw her breath into his lungs.

She melted against him, moaning into his mouth, running her fingers into his wet curls. He tasted so good, like home. She was lost in him, lost in her love as he kissed her and held her, his hands massaging her, pulling her tighter against him. Now she was dizzy from wanting her Sherlock, and she was getting lost in the frenzy when she heard his chest rumbling with laughter, his mouth widening against hers in a laugh. She pulled away, confused, "what is it?"

"I'm sorry," he chuckled, "my Molly," he kissed the side of her throat, "I was just trying to figure out if it would hurt you less if I have you on your back or go down with you on top of me. What a problem to have," he buried his lips beneath her ear, licking her soft skin, "you intoxicate me, Molly Hooper."


	13. Supernaturally

Sherlock ended up very carefully carrying her to her bed, setting her gingerly on the bed. "I'm going to turn off the lights, all right?" He asked, loosening the wet scarf around his neck. When she nodded, he walked back out of the bedroom, tossing his wet coat and scarf on the floor of the entryway, "It's supposed to rain for another two days," he told her as he walked through the flat, making sure everything was locked down, plunging the flat into darkness, "some are even worried about the Thames overflowing. But that's a good thing, a lot of bodies tend to wash up after a downpour." He didn't want her to sit in the bedroom alone, so he kept chattering, speaking fast as he went around.

"Are...are we really talking about the weather?" She called from the bedroom, her voice sounding less panic-stricken, more like his confident Molly. A part of him enjoyed the confidence with which he walked through the apartment. He was so familiar with it, so comfortable moving through it, he relished the intimacy of his knowledge. His home away from home.

It horrified him.

"No darling," he called back, "this is us. We're talking about dead body's washing ashore," he walked back into the bedroom, standing in the doorway to look at his Molly, “who cares about the bloody weather when you’ve got a pathologist and a consulting detective together?”

She was sitting ramrod straight, unable to get comfortable with her ribs and the stitches. His heart ached, his soul was on fire knowing she was in constant pain. He wondered if Leonardo had chosen her heart on purpose, not just for the symbolism but because he would hurt her in a way that would constantly remind Sherlock what he had done. Forget the scar that would forever mar the delicious skin between her breasts, but broken ribs were impossible to heal without the benefit of a cast or any restraint. Every time she breathed or laughed, it hurt her.

He took off his jacket, draping it on the back of the chair that was by the door, "no boring pillow talk for us," he stood with his hands on his waist looking at her. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying with purple shadows framing them, her hair a mess in the pony tail, dressed way down in old sweatpants and a t-shirt so big that the neck line kept slipping down one of her shoulders. She was more pale than usual, her arm covered a myriad of bandages form where the IV’s and blood transfusion had been hooked through.

            She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

            He walked towards her, kneeling in front of her on the floor. She finally looked up from the floor, big fat tears rolling down her cheeks as he lifted her chin, “I’m here,” he whispered, wrapping his arms around her as she slipped back into his care. He stroked her hair, her back, fighting a fit of rage that boiled like thunder inside him. That this woman, his woman, had been put through so much just because of _him_ …

            He reeled himself back, took a deep breath and smelled his Molly in his arms, and pushed everything else down…way down in the dungeons of his palace, where his other demons waited and plotted.

            Molly needed him now, and that’s all that mattered.

            At least he could do this for her.

            He knew he had disappointed her, disappointed John, disappointed himself by not being there to welcome her home. He should’ve been the first one there, he should’ve been the one to hold her hand as she walked out of the hospital, danced in front of her as she walked up to her flat. But he hadn’t been…he stood outside her window like a coward and watched as one by one, everyone left. When he’d seen her mother leaving…something inside him had put him on high alert.

            He couldn’t handle it, couldn’t handle seeing her in that hospital bed…couldn’t stand the thought that her musical voice had been flattened by violence, couldn’t accept that her beautiful body, the body that he worshipped because it contained her beautiful mind, had been so nightmarishly violated to prove a point to him. His brain had split into two…the part of him that wanted to tear Leonardo to shreds for having gone near his Molly, and the part of him that wanted to flee, wanted to shut down and reject everything he felt as he looked at Molly.

            Sherlock’s own experience with trauma had taught him that no matter how insistent someone was that they be left alone, under no circumstances was that person to be trusted. He remembered the night he’d returned from Musgrave…He’d told John he would be fine, that he could sleep alone. He was a man after all, a fiercely intelligent, even brave man who had single handedly dismantled vast terrorist cells and stared down psychopaths, serial killers, and terrorists in the eye. But he’d fled the darkness of 221B for Molly’s arms, and spent the next months practically living with her, or made her spend countless nights on Baker street because he was afraid of being alone.

            As he’d dreamt of Victor Trevor, his sister, the terrible things he lived through in Sherrinford…as night by night his memories returned, he woke up to find her beside him. He would nudge her awake, and they’d make love slowly, languidly, and she would hold him in her arms until he forgot the demons that travelled beneath the roads he travelled.

            So he’d waited outside with lead in his stomach, wondering how she was doing as the rain thundered down around him, soaking him. His instincts had carried him to her door, whatever primal part of him that had attached itself to Molly Hooper animating him. He’d listened at her door, and heard her crying. He’d nearly smashed the door into pieces trying to get to her.

            “Molly,” he whispered now, kissing her throat, “my Molly,” he smiled as he cupped her face in his hand, he licked her mouth, tasting her, “my love,” he murmured as he licked inside his way inside his mouth.

            He pulled back from her, and very carefully and silently he lifted her shirt from her, tossing it behind him. He wanted to rip off all her clothes and bury himself in her, in everything she was, in all her warmth and comfort. He wanted to stay inside her forever, until he knew that she occupied every pore of his being, until he could no longer breath or speak or live without Molly. He wanted to be physically possessed by her. But he was so fearful of hurting her, of touching her too carelessly and making her jolt.

            So he took his time with her, ignoring the blaringly white bandage and kissing her collarbone, tasting her with his teeth as he wrapped his arms around her waist, scooting her to the edge of the bed. “Molly,” he murmured, as he dipped his tongue into the delicious hollow at the base of her throat, “you feel so good,” he told murmured against her shoulder, kissing his way to that soft spot behind her ear, his hands gingerly running from her stomach to her bare breasts. She wasn’t wearing a bra, the garment would’ve been too painful for her to have on. “I missed you,” he told her, brushing his lips against hers, demurely at first before licking his way deeper until she opened for him.

            She wrapped her arms around him, her fingers digging into his hair, holding him steady, grounding him as he kissed her, his palms warming the tips of her breasts, kneading them until she moaned into his open mouth, “Sherlock,” she gasped.

            “Am I hurting you?” he asked quickly, pulling back enough to look into her eyes.

            “If you ask me that again, I’ll scream,” she told him, “and not in the good way,” she assured him, before pulling him to her again, kissing him as thoroughly as he had tasted her. He was grinning against her mouth, loving the fire that lived within her.

            “I’ll settle for you screaming for all the best reasons,” he assured her, kissing his way down to nip at her chin, the column of her throat, whispering her name on a sigh as he drew her nipple into his warm mouth. She melted against him, arching as his mouth and tongue wreaked havoc on her body, her fingers gripping his hair as he moved to her other breast. She looked down, and he caught her gaze, the most deliciously evil smile crossing his face as he used his lips to suckle her, deliberately letting her see how he puckered his lips…curled his tongue...

            “Sherlock,” she said on a breath.  

            Too soon he pulled away from her, his lips swollen from their kisses. He stood up, quickly discarding his clothes, completely unaware of how beautiful he was, how his lithe, slim body drove her mad with longing. “Lay back,” he murmured, his voice thick, deeper than usual. She obeyed, blushing furiously as he slipped her sweatpants and panties off. “Beautiful,” he kept whispering, running his hands over her body, pressing the gentlest kisses over the bruised skin of her torso where her ribs were injured, careful of the stitches in her chest.

            Sherlock was so achingly careful as he knelt between her thighs, spreading her legs with those broad hands, settling over, groaning in her ear as her hand found his erection, guiding him home, to the warmth that cocooned him. They both gasped as he entered her in one smooth stroke, but he didn’t begin moving until she opened her eyes to look up at him, her hands running down his back, down…down to grip him where they were joined, urging him on, giving him the most angelic smile.

            Soon they were both gasping, moaning for the other, dying, and hungry for everything the other was. They were no longer two individuals, two different people with different lives and hearts and pasts and souls…They were one person, combined in that moment. As they neared orgasm, they melded into one heart, one soul…one supernova in the universe…more than lovers.

They were soulmates…two halves of one person, finally complete.

            Soon she couldn’t stop herself…soon she threw her hands up over her head, gripping the medal frame of her bed as she wrapped her legs around his waist…urging him deeper, closer…Soon he was breathing heavily against her throat…he gripped her hands over her head, twining their fingers together as he kissed her and kissed her and kissed her…

            Soon she exploded around him, gasping his name, wave after wave of pleasure washing over her body, pulling him deeper inside her, crying out for all the world to hear.

            Soon he was joining her, forcing his eyes to look deep into hers as his mouth went lax with pleasure, as he gave her all that he was, all that he ever had been, all that he would ever be. He threw his head back and roared…

            Finally, the world around them settled, and he stayed inside her as the tumult of their love started to re-stitch the universe back together. “I love you,” Sherlock told her, with no doubt in his heart or mind, with clarity in his pale eyes.

            “I love you too,” she smiled back, content in her lover’s arms.


	14. Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow

            Mycroft Holmes sat in his office in the bunker, his snifter of brandy long forgotten as the man found himself lost in thought, staring at the two empty chairs in front of his desk.

            The memory was near the surface and it floated to him with an ease he found uncomfortable. But his memories conjured up his parents as they’d sat in his office, with Sherlock standing quietly at the other end of the office, listening to their parents confronted with the idea that their daughter was still alive. That they’d been lied to.

            Sherlock’s voice floated to his mind now, “he did his best.”

            His little brother had then proceeded to do the impossible, drawing Eurus out of her shell, getting her to communicate through the violin. The pride on his parents’ face when the pair had played for them deep in the bowels of Sherrinford would forever live in his mind. He was proud so proud of his little brother, of the strength Sherlock was capable of displaying.

            In his quietest and most honest moments, Mycroft could admit that even though he was intellectually superior to Sherlock, Sherlock was the strongest of the three Holmes kids. And he always would be because anyone could become an intellectual, could apply themselves and even surpass the Holmes’ children in intelligence if they really wanted to. But learning to love and feel, to reciprocate emotions, was not something that could be taught or emulated.

            Mycroft was sure that if Sherlock had been like him, a void in his chest cavity where his heart should’ve been, they would not have walked out of Sherrinford alive that night. Had it not been for sentiment, Sherlock would have killed Mycroft at their sister’s behest. But his little brother was too emotionally attached, too tuned into the realm Mycroft dismissed, to pull the trigger.

            _“Holmes kill Holmes.”_

In those same quiet, hidden moments, Mycroft acknowledged that his brother was the most important thing in his life. Whatever part of him that allowed love and affection placed Sherlock in a category of importance above everyone and everything else. He of course weighed that importance against the interests of the government he served whenever it was necessary to do so, and found Sherlock wanting.

            He’d always believed that his soft spot for Sherlock was born of a sense of responsibility, his failure as an older brother to protect Sherlock from the horrors of childhood trauma. He’d been outmatched by Eurus, but Mycroft should’ve been able to protect Sherlock, to help Sherlock preserve his identity, his emotions. That failure had led his little brother to seek succor in every crack den in London, and with every list that Mycroft added to his collection, the more his failure haunted him.

            Then John Watson had come along and drawn his brother out of his shell. Every now and then, Mycroft saw flashes of his brother as the boy he’d been, peaking through the cracks. Until he’d finally allowed Molly Hooper to shatter whatever was left of his façade.

            And Mycroft, until very recently, had believed that Sherlock had come to terms with his humanness, that the trauma Molly Hooper had suffered served as an anchor for that humanness, that desire to be with her, to be around her. After that agonizing phone call, after seeing her butchered, Mycroft would’ve thought Sherlock would never be able to leave Molly’s side.

            But his little brother was always capable of surprising him.

            He glanced at his phone again, rereading the words of John Watson’s texts:

                        _SH is missing. Seen last @ MH’s._

            That had been five days ago.

            No one had seen or heard from Sherlock since he’d left her apartment, early the day after she’d come home from hospital. According to Molly, he’d shown up after everyone had left, spent the night, helped change her bandage, and bolted. In her steely way, she’d refused to tell anyone what they’d been talking about when he’d taken off.

            The tragedy had been that everyone knew what he was doing. Lestrade, John, and himself had gathered in Molly’s flat to figure out where he was, listing all his bolt holes. Mycroft had glanced around the room, filled with the exceptional people that cared about Sherlock, and known from their frowns and downcast expressions that they all _knew_ what he was doing. Just not where.

            “Why not just leave him be this time?” John Watson had asked angrily, “we find him, we bring him back, clean him up and then he’ll be back at it again. What’s the use?”  
            “He’ll overdose,” Molly had said in a small voice from her perch on the bar stool at the kitchen counter, sitting unnaturally straight. The kindness that had always graced her face replaced with stone. In that moment, Sherlock had turned to rock the only two people capable of loving because of his flaws, not just despite them.

            “He’s also a security risk,” Mycroft had added, “as I’ve said before, a high Sherlock is dangerous on the loose. We must find him, for national security’s sake if not his.”

            Molly hadn’t said anything, not agreeing to help or look for him. She’d sat there, indifferent.

            Sherlock had succeeded, as he always did. Except his success was his biggest failure yet. He’d lost the love and respect of a good woman. A woman that most men would chop off essential body parts to be around.

            When Mycroft’s phone had rung scarcely an hour ago, he’d answered it expecting one of his feelers to be telling him that Sherlock was dead. Overdosed at some doss house.

            But it hadn’t. The phone call had been from Anathema, telling him they’d found Sherlock, and were en route. He’d informed John Watson immediately, who’d agreed to be driven to the bunker.

            He walked in now, his mouth set in a grim line, looking around the office, “where is he then?”

            “In transit,” Mycroft sat up straighter, adopting the façade of the benevolent government official and tossing aside the visor of the terrified brother who’d been imagining his little brother’s funeral moments ago. “He was found in the company of a gentleman named Stuart Clive Shorter, also known as Psycho, aka the Lunatic on Level D aka the Crazy Fucker. All his nicknames include the general presupposition that he is mentally unstable, with a criminal record so checkered and extensive that he requires his own drawer in the county prosecutor’s filing cabinet. He is categorized as a ‘chaotic’.”

            John was rubbing his eyes as he dropped into the chair once occupied by Mycroft’s outraged father. “Jesus,” Watson muttered, “he really knows how to find them. And _how_ did you find _him_?”

            “I recruited members of his homeless network to look for Shezza,” Mycroft told him, “and they located him within ten hours.”

            “I feel like a parent,” John Watson laughed on an explosion of breath, “trying to figure out what in hell to do with my problem teenager.”

            Mycroft didn’t get a chance to response as Sherlock slammed the door to the office open with such force that it banged against the wall, bouncing and leaving an impression of the door handle into the wall. “What is so terribly important you had to pull me away from my research?” he yelled, dropping into the empty chair. He was wearing dirty sweatpants, his hood hiding his dirty hair, his beard matted and unkempt, his eyes wild. He looked like someone who was best friends with a man nicknamed Psycho. “Oh, hello John, what are you doing here?” he looked back at Mycroft with those unhinged eyes, “I know for a fact that Interpol picked up Leonardo and he’s awaiting extradition back to the Netherlands for trial but the attorneys are struggling over who has jurisdiction. The country he started in, the aforementioned Netherlands, with a body count of five, including his own sister. The US, where he perfected his technique as the Chesapeake Ripper while acting as an FBI informant, body count six. Italy 3, 2 here. I volunteered to be judge, jury, and executioner but you, brother mine, said no. So unless this has to do with another matter worth my time, I’d like to return to Stuart. He has the most fascinating stories and perspective on life and the government. You should really hire him as a PA or something, oh,” he paused for a breath, reaching into his pocket, “here,” he put a folded piece of paper on the desk. He turned his attention to John, “where’s Rosie?”

            “With Mrs. Hudson,” John answered as Mycroft took the paper, “we’ve been staying at Baker street, in case you turned up.”

            Mycroft read the list and practically threw it back at Sherlock, as if it was a poisoned piece of paper, a viper ready to strike, “Oh Sherlock,” he rubbed his forehead, unable to meet his brother’s erratic gaze.

            Watson picked up the paper, his expression melting from anger to a kind of despair that could be contained or put into human terms. “ _How_ are you not dead?”  
            “Almost did,” he answered rather cheerfully, “that’s how I met Stuart.”

            “We need to get you to a hospital,” John carefully folded the piece of paper, frowning at it, “but what’s the use? Something else will happen. You’ll act like a total git, and we’ll all be back here again. There’s no use is there. No bloody use in trying. I thought you’d finally let Molly in. That you finally understood what I’d been trying to tell you but you don’t want to it’s not that you don’t, it’s that you don’t want to feel. It’s too easy to carry on like a robot.”

            John’s quiet tone had gotten Sherlock’s attention and held it. Mycroft watched his brother quietly, with a hopelessness that he’d never felt before. Not even when he’d walked through crack dens to find him, or infiltrated terrorist cells for him, or watching him murder Magnussen.

            “You’re my best friend, and I’ll always be there for you,” John continued in that same quiet resolve, “you’re a git but you’re the same git that helped Mary and I stay together. That threw himself into a bon fire to help me. Spent 2 years tracking down terrorists to keep them from harming your loved ones. You’re a flawed man, but you’re an incredibly good man. I love you, Sherlock, and I’ll always love you. But I’m done fighting for you when you won’t even lift a finger.”

            Sherlock frowned, “that’s…exactly what Molly said.”

            John nodded, lifting himself out of the chair, “I know. She told me,” he walked to the door with the shadow of a limp in his gait, “I saw you waiting outside her flat that night by the way, when she got home,” he walked out, closing the door behind him with a resolute click. It would’ve been so much better if he’d slammed it behind him.

            “She’s all right,” Mycroft said after a few moments, correctly guess Sherlock’s next question. “She’s started seeing a therapist that I’ve thoroughly checked out. Her mother visits every day to help cook and clean but Molly insists on sleeping alone. Mrs. Hudson checks on her on a daily basis, and she even bought Molly a cat named Lucifer. She also had a check-up with her doctor. The sutures are healing nicely as are her ribs. She is going to start physical therapy next month to increase her mobility but she has already started doing light Pilates. She is a strong, _strong_ person Sherlock. Astounding.”

            Sherlock was looking down at his feet, “you sound as if you are genuinely fond of her.”

            “I am comfortable in telling you frankly that I am,” Mycroft intertwined his fingers together in front of him, “mum’s even visited her for tea, twice now.”

            “Since when do you agree on anything with mother?” Sherlock asked.

            “She’s got a wonderful sense for people,” Mycroft pointed out, “I’ve always trusted that about her.”

            Sherlock chuckled then, an unexpected, mirthless sound that conveyed no joy no amusement, “if my actions these past few months have led you to believe that a deficiency exists with Molly Hooper and not me, you have absolutely no sense in people, brother mine.”

            “I have reached this point in this road by concluding that even my little brother has faults. And whatever blinders I’ve bound myself with when it comes to you have been more detrimental to you than I ever wished to acknowledge. Perhaps I coddled you too much, insulated you so well that now, you are throwing away a chance at happiness without even knowing why you’re doing it.”

            Sherlock tried to scoff at his brother’s words but all he ended up doing was expelling breath through his nostrils, “what happiness are you ranting about? Stop being a martyr.”

            “Molly Hooper. For you, Molly Hooper is nothing but happiness contained in an awkward, mousey, unassuming pathologist with the heart of a lioness,” Mycroft told him, “and I’m done being a martyr for you, brother mine. I’ve spent so many years making excuses for you, for everything you’ve ever done. I’ve convinced myself countless times that everything you do, all the hurt you create for yourself, is my failing. Maybe if I’d told you the truth about Redbeard, about our sister, maybe…” Mycroft interrupted himself with a shrug, “but everything is out in the open now. Your memories have resurfaced, and you’ve walked away from Molly Hooper.”

            Sherlock sat in silence then, looking at his shoes as if the dirty white sneakers were somehow the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen. He was still sitting upright but somehow, he was retreating into himself, compartmentalizing himself physically.

            He swallowed, clearing his throat before he broke the silence, “it’s…it’s too easy,” Sherlock cleared his throat again, “I’ve taken enough drugs to finally voice it out loud…it’s too damn easy to fall into her arms, into her love. She has such tremendous control over me, and I don’t know what to do about it. It’s terrifying to think that my life is not my own, my heart, my emotions don’t belong to me anymore.”

            “Brother mine,” Mycroft leaned forward, “why do you think that ‘love’ is bad? That feelings are a thing to be avoided? Sherlock,” he sighed now, rubbing his eyes, fighting off an exhaustion unlike anything he’d ever felt before, “Eurus and I…don’t have use for it not because we’re better than you, but because we’re not strong enough to deal with them. Whatever romantic ideas have been attached to the chemical reaction we’ve termed love, it is essential. Invaluable. This concept of love is a weakness you should be proud of little brother, the only weakness to take pride in.”

            Not long after that, Sherlock was put in a car and driven back to Baker street, where he sat in the darkness for hours, turning his brother’s words over and over in his mind, Rosie’s teddy bear clutched in his hands.


	15. Brother My Cup Is Empty

            John and Rosie Watson meandered through the streets of London, towards Baker street the next morning. John had woken up that day, after having scarcely slept for a moment, with an urgent need to see his best friend, to make sure he was at least alive. He’d nearly lost Sherlock too many times over the course of their friendship, and no matter how angry or disappointed he was in his best friend…he loved him, and his loss would be unbearable.

            He’d meant what he’d said to him. That no matter what happened, he would stay his best friend, and he would always be there for him.

            He just didn’t have to be in a good mood to do it.

            “Ready to see your Uncle Sherlock?” he asked Rosie now as they approached 221B.

            Rosie was all grins this morning, chattering excitedly about finally getting to see her Uncle Sherlock after days and days of not seeing him. In her childish way, she’d expressed her astonishment that her favorite uncle had abandoned her for so many days, hadn’t come over to play, or didn’t shoo John out of Baker street so they could play in peace. John had woken her up that morning with the news and she’d been ecstatic, nearly vaulting out of her crib.

            John had barely opened the front door before Rosie ran up, yelling for Sherlock, clambering up the stairs in haste. “Let me help you,” he laughed, picking up his daughter with an arm around her middle, holding her on the side as he carried up to the door of Sherlock’s flat. As soon as he set her down, she vaulted inside, pushing the door open with some effort as her tiny hands struggled with the door handle. He watched her stand in the living room for a moment, quickly scanning all the places Sherlock could be in the living, turning to him inquisitively when she didn’t find him.

            For a moment, John was confronted with Mary’s raised eyebrow in his daughter’s face and rightly placed suspicion, wondering if Sherlock had gone back to Stuart instead of here. But then he heard muffled noises coming from Sherlock’s room, and saw that the door was open and there was movement of a shadow inside. John pointed at the bedroom and Rosie took off, yelling his name.

            “Why Miss Watson!” he heard Sherlock’s gruff voice and an audible “oomph” as Rosie had no doubt launched herself at him, “you are certainly a sight for sore eyes!”

            John walked over, laughing as he saw his daughter wrapped around Sherlock, who’d clearly still been in bed. He was clean finally, his hair washed and his beard shaved off. He was gaunt, the hollows beneath his cheekbones more pronounced, with purple circles beneath his eyes. He was also wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt to bed, no doubt to hide the track marks on his forearms. Rosie didn’t care about any of that, and the two sat in his bed, with the little girl tucked against his chest, looking so content that John was nearly jealous.

            “Rough night?” he asked his best friend, standing in the doorway as Sherlock absently kissed the top of Rosie’s head.

            “The usual DT’s,” Sherlock’s sleep gruff voice told him nonchalantly, “nothing I couldn’t handle.”

            “You’re gonna be miserable for the next three days,” John told him.

            “At least,” Sherlock agreed, wrapping Rosie up so completely in his arms that she nearly disappeared from John’s view, her head tucked securely under Sherlocks’ chin, “but most of it got expelled from my system, one way or another.”

            The little girl lifted her head up that moment, asking if he would play with her. “After a quick bath darling,” Sherlock told her with a smile, “why don’t you go help daddy make some coffee for me?”

            Sherlock was out of the shower and dressed in record time, finding Rosie and John sitting on the floor together in front of the fireplace, seemingly drawing together. “How are you feeling?” John asked as he watched Sherlock lower his body into the leather chair with a grunt, his hair wet and slicked back, looking sicklier without the mop of curls to hide his tired eyes.

            “Like a fool,” he forced himself to look into John’s eyes, something he’d avoided doing since Mycroft’s office the previous night, “John I’m…I’m sorry. For everything,” he shook his head, “I know worrying about me shouldn’t be on your list of daily worries. You’ve got enough on your plate.”

            Sherlock eventually sat down on the ground with Rosie, playing with her with a gusto that always surprised John. He had always thought Sherlock would be uncomfortable around children, standoffish, unsure of what to do with them. But he’d been so surprised by the freedom he saw in Sherlock around Rosie, how comfortable he was in showing affection. John suspected it had something to do with the fact that a child’s love was unconditional, innocent, without any harsh judgement as to his ability to relate to her emotionally. He also suspected that Sherlock could unleash his imagination with the little girl, and hence, the perfect play date was born.

            But after about half an hour, Sherlock’s much abused body began to shut down and he walked her downstairs, handing her off to Mrs. Hudson with a kiss on both of their cheeks, promising Rosie he’d return for her after a bit.

            He walked back up the stairs, sitting across from John, pretending he wasn’t about to collapse. John watched his friend, noting that he was dressed in his usual suit, looking more like himself than he had before. Sherlock finally broke the silence, staring directly into the empty fireplace, “Molly will never forgive me.”

            “Yeah,” John agreed, perhaps too quickly, “and no one would blame her.”

            “What do I do?” Sherlocked asked quietly, “as unaccustomed as I am asking for your advice, this is a matter that has to do with the heart and with emotions. It is an area that I am a novice to...so I’m asking for your advice with the preface that I have eaten a very, very large piece of humble pie.”

            John chuckled, “I think I’ll commemorate this great moment with a stamp,” he grinned, leaning forward to his best friend, “it’s not gonna be easy. She’s pissed and she has every right to be. And knowing Molly, she’s going to put you through hell but she loves you for some reason.”

            “But it is possible?” he asked, sitting up straighter with a hopeful note in his voice, “there is a chance?”

            John laughed again, “this is Molly. Nothing is guaranteed.”

            “You’ll help me get her back?”

            “It’s an uphill battle,” he muttered, but nodded. Of course, he’d help Sherlock. After all, isn’t that what friends were for?

           


	16. Nature Boy

            Four months passed by and Molly couldn’t decide whether they passed quickly or not quickly enough. But whatever speed she attributed to them, she knew that they had passed at least, in a blur of doctor’s visits, physical therapy, mental therapy, and learning how to live with a cat named Lucifer. She filled her time between those formal appointments by spending her days reading, had even gone to the country with her mother, enjoying the crisp, clean air. She also spent much of her time catching up with all the tv shows that she never had time for, rekindling friendships she’d neglected, and bonding with her goddaughter.      

            She was healing, she could say that. She could also say that she was making progress. She still refused to wear any article of clothing that showed any part of her chest, bitching and moaning about how hard it was to find t-shirts for women that weren’t v-necks. She still slept with the lights on but she had recently started trusting herself enough to turn off the kitchen lights when she went to bed. Her ribs were almost completely healed, and the shortness of breath and high blood pressure were starting to even out.

            The nightmares hadn’t stopped of course, but they were becoming less frequent, less familiar somehow, as if the further she got away from it in terms of time, the easier it was for her to pretend they were dreams. And not reality.

            She still hadn’t returned to work of course, the toll the surgery had taken on her body made it impossible to return so quickly. She was perpetually exhausted and in pain, not to mention her inability to keep from jumping out of her skin every time something even slightly unexpected happened. Making toast had become a chore lately because it scared her to death, but she was getting better…and she was promised by the doctors that she would return to work. Soon. Within the next few weeks, they said. But she somehow didn’t believe them…knew never to trust doctors.

            So she walked around her flat now, a hot cup of tea warming her hands as she looked outside at the surprisingly blue sky. It was such a gorgeous day that she was tempted to go for a walk, or go sight-seeing around London, just to get out of the flat. “What do you think Lucifer?” she asked the big, fat gray and black cat, named after his counterpart in _Cinderella_ for his coloring and temperament, “should we go out today, or stay inside again?” the cat meowed, rubbing himself against her leg and she nodded, “got you. Yah, too much hassle to go out, let’s stay in and watch _Parade’s End._ ”

            Her phone began to ring in her pocket, she reached for it immediately, but rolled her eyes when she saw it was Sherlock, pressing the button that dumped him into her voicemail. He, of course, rang again and she again diverted the call to voicemail.

            She sat on the sofa and laughed, thinking she would rather be blown to bits in her flat by his insane sister than answer his insane phone calls.

            Molly hadn’t seen Sherlock since that morning, and she didn’t want to. She didn’t even check outside her window to see if he was outside or not at night, keeping a watchful eye on her flat. He called her every day, sent her texts. John Watson assured her that he was trying to improve himself, trying to come to terms with what he felt for her, that he was trying to become a man worthy of her attention. Molly had nodded at his words, and changed the subject, asking about Rosie and John’s work instead.

            Sherlock hadn’t gone beyond the phone calls and texts, although he never left a voicemail. He would usually call twice, followed by a text that said something innocuous like “hi, just wanted to ask how you’re doing today. I love you,” or “wanted to see if you wanted chips, I love you.”

            At first, they had freaked her out…the tone was too normal for Sherlock, too mundane, and always ended with “I love you”. But after John had told her that he was on a quest to prove himself to her, she had chalked it up to another of his schemes, another plan that would succeed for a while but fail miserably in the end, leaving Molly gutted in more ways than one.

            But today, he broke his pattern and called her a third time. She finally grabbed her phone, hanging up on him, and replied to Sherlock Holmes for the first time in four months. “What” was all that the first text said, second text was “wnt be back at Barts. Cnt help you.”

            She had barely sent the text when fists started pounding at her door, “Molly!” she heard his familiar voice, “Molly!” he called again.

            Suddenly, she grew so angry that she looked at the mug in her hands and was tempted to throw it at the wall. That demanding, arrogant tone…that self-righteousness…the inability to comprehend his own failings as a human being…He exhausted her. He tried her patience.

            He annoyed the ever-loving shit out of her.

            In the weeks after his disappearance, she had cherished the memories of him that night he’d shown up. The way he’d made love to her, kissed her, held her as if she was everything, as if the words he spewed were the actual truth. She had spent those first few days longing for him to come back to her, for his warmth in her bed…Spent hours imagining the way he’d held himself inside her, his eyes luminous, almost glowing with the emotions he felt for her. She’d remembered how he’d changed her bandage, kissing her throat as he did so because he somehow had known how horrified she was by her marred skin.

            But now rage filled her, and she wished she could trip across a Tardis-like time machine that would allow her to go back in time and slap some sense into the doe-eyed idiot she’d been.

            She still felt like Molly Hooper. She was just Molly Hooper who no longer gave a flying fuck, and had learned the joys of cursing.

            “WHAT,” she yelled, throwing the door open to find him standing there, wearing his trademark overcoat over a blue suit that set his eyes off.

            “Hi,” he sounded genuinely pleased to see her, his chest rising and falling as if he was overwhelmed by her presence.

            “What do you want Sherlock,” she sounded exasperated even to herself, not moving away from the door in case he thought of coming inside.

            “Can…can we talk?” he asked her, sounding almost worried, as if suspecting that she would say no and slam the door in his face. Smart man, he put his shoulder against the jamb.

            “About?” Molly actually started tapping her toe, Lucifer meowing angrily at the intruder.

            “Is that Lucifer? Rosie tells me about him all the time,” he grinned down at the cat then back at her, as if hoping her grim expression had softened.

            “What do you want,” she repeated, “’cause unless it’s something important, I must get back inside, I can’t stand up for too long.”

            Something shifted in his face then, a grimness settling on his carefully constructed features that it made her falter. He looked…devastated, as broken as he’d been the night he’d first sought her out, after Sherrinford. She almost reached for him, almost cupped his cheek to sooth away whatever demons had appeared before him.

            Almost.

            “I’m sorry,” he breathed, “I don’t mean to keep you but I really do want to talk to you.”

            “About what?” she ran a hand through her hair, “I told you, I haven’t been to work yet, so I can’t help you with whatever case or daft experiment you’re working on.”

            “Well, first of all, you cut your hair,” he commented, those pale eyes, now a remarkable shade of blue reflecting his shirt, traced her newly cut hair that came only to her chin, to her eyes, her lips, her throat, as if taking stock.

            “Woopity doo,” she said dryly, “good bye Sherlock.”

            She tried closing the door but ended up slamming it against his should and foot, making him grunt in pain. She growled in frustration, “ugh! Fine! Come in! Do whatever the fuck you want! Not like I can fuckin’ keep you out!” she walked back inside, leaving the door open. She stormed off to the kitchen, trying not to cradle her midriff or wince because yelling hurt.

            “Molly,” he tried to sound reasonable, gently shutting her door before walking in, hands in front of him as if he were talking to a hostile. Which he was. “Let me explain—”

            She cut him off, surprising him as she walked around the kitchen counter, her hands on her hips, looking at him with a defiance in her eyes that was usually followed by him getting slapped in the face. “Show me your arms.”

            “What?”

            “Show me your arm,” she repeated, looking up directly into his eyes without an ounce of warmth. And Sherlock’s world crashed down around him, and he finally understood just how much he had failed, how horrendously he had fallen in the eyes of this woman he adored. He took off his overcoat and coat, throwing it on the sofa, making Lucifer yowl in anger as he was disturbed from his perch.

He unbuttoned the sleeve of his shirt, revealing his forearm and she yanked it straight out, looking down at the track marks that hadn’t quite healed yet, “no fresh marks, how delightful,” she was looking at his skin with a frown, trying to bend her head down as far as she could Sherlock wouldn’t see the tears that threatened to overwhelm her. But her body betrayed her, as it always did, and she traced the track marks with her fingertip, “you damned idiot,” she whispered and dropped his arm, turning her back on him as she marched back into the kitchen. “There’s no point in you staying,” she told him, “there’s nothing to talk about, but I can’t kick you out because you’ll ghost back in here. And short of calling in a priest to exorcise you out…” she shook her head.

“You’re just not going to talk to me,” he realized after they spent ten minutes in complete silence. When she didn’t answer, Sherlock felt himself getting riled up, a hint of indignation entering his tone, “really? Not one word? Fine then, I won’t leave until you speak with me.”

Molly pretended he wasn’t there, that he didn’t even exist. She walked past him to turn on her sound system, turning up the German industrial metal so loud that the glass around her flat vibrated with it. She busied herself making dinner for herself, making sure she only cooked enough for one person, pouring herself tea. She pretended she didn’t notice him sit on the floor by the door, resting his head against the wall as if settling in for the long haul, but out of her way. As if he was considerate of her space or something.

If he was considerate of anything, then he should’ve been gone by now.

But he didn’t leave, just watched her quietly as she sat down to eat dinner, watched her as she cleaned up the kitchen, sitting on the couch with her tea to watch TV. “What’s this?” he finally asked as she put on _Parade’s End_ , but of course she didn’t bother answering him. She curled on her side on the couch, rubbing her chest, then clasping them under her head.

But five hours of ignoring him, of pretending he wasn’t there or seeming to make an effort was killing her. She wasn’t strong enough to ignore him. She hated him but at the same time, oh how we she loved him.

So as tears welled up in her eyes again and she rubbed away on her forearm, pretending they were for Christopher Tiejens and not for her Sherlock, for their love. She closed her eyes as Christopher talked about how he’d been injured during an attack by the German’s, listened to the actor describe the various bombs and the sounds they made.

“My love,” suddenly his voice was near her, felt him put his cheek on her forearm where it rested under her head, “you’re breaking my heart,” he whispered, his face a sigh from hers, “just talk to me.”

She smiled joylessly, tremulously as she touched his hair, “there’s nothing to talk about, Sherlock. Nothing to say.”

Molly put her hand down, forcing her eyes back to the TV screen, recalling her favorite quote by philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, “what you do speaks so loudly, that I cannot hear what you say.”


	17. More News From Nowhere

            She took his breath away.

            Molly was straddling him, naked and perfect, permeating every sense he possessed. She was riding him slowly, balancing herself by putting her hands on his chest, her head thrown back as she moaned in ecstasy. She was so beautiful in her passion, and she felt so good enveloping him, riding him and gasping his name. He couldn’t help himself, lifting his torso off the bed to lick her nipples, suckling her.

            Her fingers felt unbelievable in his hair as she held him against her chest, and the taste of her was intoxicating, revitalizing. He’d been dead, deprived of life, deprived of sanity without her touch, without the taste of her skin, without her moans filling his ears. “Molly,” he groaned, making her shiver because the tip of her breast was still in his mouth, his hot breath…his words making her clench around him, pulling him deeper, tighter inside her. “Molly you’re my life,” he told her on a gasp, “you’re my everything. I don’t know why I ever thought I could live without you.”

            She pulled back to look at him, cupping his face in the palms of her hands as she rode him, “you don’t live without me Sherlock, you die,” she told him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and hugging him against her body, “you can’t survive without me. You can’t live without me, and you’re an idiot for thinking you could.”

            Sherlock woke up to find himself with his face buried in his pillow, his sheets tangled around his hips and effectively humping his mattress as he dreamt of Molly. Angry that he’d woken up, he flipped himself on his back, licking his lips and practically tasting her enchanting skin.

            God, he missed her.

             But as John had happily pointed out, whatever torture she put him through, whatever hell she saw fit to create for him, was well deserved. And Sherlock was bound to agree.

            He sat up, needing to be with Molly so much that he found his mind wandering to the secret stash of cigarettes he’d hidden in John’s old room. Or better yet, calling Wiggins for a distraction.

            Growling in frustration he vaulted out of bed, stomping to the kitchen to find his tea already prepared and waiting for him. He sipped it angrily, sitting at the kitchen counter and reading his texts from John.

            He went through his morning ritual, calling her twice and not leaving a voicemail, his fingers flying over the keyboard of his phone as he typed out today’s text message:

                        _Good morning…Can’t wait to see you at our goddaughter’s party_

_I love you._

_-SH_

 He reread it five times, hoping to chisel away at her resolve with the reminder that they shared a goddaughter.

            Today would be the second in person attempt at contact with Molly. The first having been the day before, when she’d refused to talk to him, forcing him to leave the flat around midnight because he knew she’d needed her sleep. He’d sulked out, his insides tied in Gordian knots of shame and worry.

            What if this was it? What if Molly Hooper could never forgive him? What if she refused to accept his excuses this time, his shortcomings, and decided to hold everything he was against him?

            She would be in the right, he knew that. All the heartbreak he’d brought into her life, all the grief, all the broken promises…he didn’t deserve her.

            But he couldn’t live without her either.

            He didn’t remember whether he’d been sober when he’d made the decision, or even if he’d been fully conscious at the time, but he did distinctly remember knowing that he would kill himself if Molly didn’t take him back. He had given himself a year to prove to her that he could change, that he would keep his promises…that he’d become worthy of her.

            But life was nothing without her love, without her smile brightening up his darkest days.

            It was a tad dramatic, even for him, to decided he’d die rather than live without her love but as he sat in his empty kitchen, looking around the mess of it all, the unfinished experiments, the newspapers and books littering every surface…it wasn’t worth the fight if Molly wasn’t there to share it all with him.

            His life was an undeniable source of darkness, the cases he dealt with, the people he encountered, the situations he became a part of…they all seemed manageable when Molly was around him, when she could crack a terrible joke in a morgue. Her endless ability to stay optimistic, grudgingly so at times, still helped him cope with it all. Because Molly was there, and she would always have a smile for him.

            His life belonged to her and her alone…if she didn’t claim it then what was it worth?

            But without that smile…John’s voice floated in his mind, Mary’s teasing smile accompanying it. “ _Drama queen.”_

            He would get his second attempt at Molly today, at John and Mary’s house, where they would be gathering to celebrate Rosie’s second birthday. He knew for sure that Molly would be there for their goddaughter, and he planned on making a very careful bid to draw her towards him, to prove to her that he had changed.

            Of course, he was worried that he really hadn’t changed, that he would revert back to his old terrible ways and hurt the love of his life with his dishonesty...But this was love, and apparently, it meant taking blind risks. He looked at himself in the mirror as he got dressed, acknowledging that at least he looked healthy on the outside, having gained some weight back and followed the strict diet that John had put him on. His eyes were clear as was his skin, the track marks on his forearm almost completely disappeared.

            He looked like the shadow of someone worthy of Dr. Molly Hooper.

 

            The object of his thoughts walked up to the house and was greeted by a chorus of welcomes and hugs from everyone she passed by. John’s hug was the longest and tightest, bussing her on the cheek, “I’m so happy to see you,” he told her with a grin, taking the gift from her hands.

            “Where’s the birthday girl?” she asked, following him to the yard where most of the celebration was happening. It was all decorated in bright colors and streamers, balloons everywhere, and children of all ages running amok.

            John pointed her gaze to one corner of the yard where her goddaughter was perched on Sherlock’s shoulders, being chased by a gaggle of children who were all no more than 3 or 4 years old. He was laughing, his face transformed into unreserved joy and delight as he tried to zig zag through the yard, as if trying to lose the kids training behind him. Rosie was giggling uncontrollably, her fingers clutching Sherlock’s hair for balance and probably tugging painfully at his locks, but he didn’t seem to mind.

            “I’ve always had the theory that Sherlock Holmes is a child in a man’s body, and turns out I’m right,” John laughed, watching the kids with Sherlock.

            “Rosie does adore him,” was all Molly could let herself say, again overwhelmed by the need to break something. She wanted to say something about him managing to stay sober for Rosie’s birthday party but she refrained herself.

            “You,” John cleared his throat, dressed in jeans and a grayish blue top, looking like the father that every single mother watched out of the corner of her eyes at the playground. There was in fact a young mother standing just a few feet in front of them, that had not stopped staring at him since he and Molly had walked outside, “you don’t mind him being here, do you?”

            “Oh my God,” Molly instantly felt ashamed of herself, of the position she’d put John in. She gripped his arm, unaware that the single mother looked slightly offended that she was touching him, “no, God no I don’t mind him being here! Of course, I don’t! He’s her godfather, he’s _meant_ to be here. I mean, look at how much they enjoy each other! It’s adorable!”

            “Thank you,” he kissed her cheek again with a smile, a brotherly kiss that still fluttered the feathers of the young mother next to them.

            Molly walked back inside, finding Harry Watson and Mrs. Hudson busy in the kitchen with a few other women, helping get everything read for the quick lunch they would be having. She tried to help at least, but Mrs. Hudson forced her to sit down at the kitchen counter, sipping a mimosa that was mostly orange juice, and chat with the women.

They finally meandered outside, joining the others as the children screamed and yelled, giggling and having such a wonderful time that the cloud was lifted even from Molly’s heart. In the midst of the children, the biggest kid of them all was enjoying himself even more, having removed his coat in favor of just his deep purple shirt with his sleeves rolled up. Harry immediately found an empty chair for Molly, having been told by her brother that she was still susceptible to exhaustion. The women came to stand around her now, talking amongst themselves as Molly tried to keep herself from joining the kids.

“I love that dress!” one of the women commented, and it took her a minute to realize that she was being addressed, “very modest!” there was something undeniably nasty in the woman’s tone that struck Molly.

            She suddenly became aware that all the other women were wearing summer dresses or tops that showed off their chest, perhaps not low cut enough to be sleazy but they weren’t buttoned up the way Molly was. The dress she’d chosen had a collar that buttoned up all the way to her chest, leaving everything to the imagination. She kept looking down, checking to see if her skin was showing at all.

Momentarily speechless, Mrs. Hudson came to her rescue, “it suits you dear,” she assured Molly with a hand on her shoulder, “it fits a woman of your position, one of the leading pathologists in London you know. Scotland Yard doesn’t make a move without her. And Sherlock Holmes,” she pointed at him, “trusts her word more than anyone else’s.”

            The woman instantly quieted down, murmuring something about getting more punch and walked away. “Ignore her,” Janine Hawkins advised, sitting in the empty chair next to her. Molly squirmed in her chair, more self-conscious now as the beautiful, black haired woman leaned towards her. Her make-up was flawless, her hair artfully curled, wearing a tank top that showed off her toned skin, and short shorts that extenuated her toned, tanned legs. Molly surreptitiously tucked her legs under the chair, wrapping her arms around her middle to hide her torso, fiddling with her short hair. “She’s bitter, her husband just left her for his secretary, who happens to be older than her.”

            “Ouch,” Harry commented, sitting in a comfortably masculine pose.

            Sherlock chose that moment to walk over to them, “hello,” he smiled, hugging Janine briefly, kissing her cheek although his eyes never left Molly. He nodded at Harry and knelt in front of Molly, “you look beautiful,” he told her, as if he had known she was feeling insecure, sitting between the two women that were so comfortable in their own skin. But this was Sherlock, and he never missed anything. Her body language had probably given her away instantly.

            “Hello Sherlock,” she tried to make her smile as genuine as possibly, ignoring the way he balanced himself in the crouched position by holding on to her ankles. There was something intimate and familiar with the way he touched her, as if they were still together.

            “Haven’t seen you in a while Sherl,” Janine commented slyly, “you don’t call, you don’t write.”

            “I just read the interview you did for _The Sun_ ,” he told her, “just a few days ago, claiming you’d found some compromising pictures we’d taken together. I thought you were done getting your revenge after buying your cottage in, where was it? Sussex?”

            “I need a new car,” she grinned mischievously and Molly wanted to bolt. She remembered seeing Janine at the wedding, feeling insanely jealous of the tall, exotic beauty that had eventually warmed Sherlock’s bed. Of course, Molly had been engaged to Tom but still, her heart never stopped aching for Sherlock.

            “Ah,” Sherlock nodded, and she tried to ignore the fact that he was rubbing her ankle with his thumb, “what model are you thinking?”

            “With the money _The Sun_ is paying me, I can afford a Mercedes,” her laughter was musical, infectious even because Harry chuckled too. Molly tried to smile, but she knew it looked as fake as it felt.

            She needed him to stop touching her.

            So, she moved her legs out of his reach, taking petty satisfaction in the way he swayed. She took her phone out of her dress’s secret pockets, and started checking her emails like she had something important that could be in there. Of course, Sherlock didn’t move. Just kept kneeling in front of her legs as he talked to Harry and Janine.

            Finally, Harry asked the question that Molly had been hoping would get answered, “are there pictures?”  

            “God no!” Janine laughed, “but they didn’t care. Just gave them enough dirty details that they bought the story without asking for the photos. I told them I’m holding them as collateral.”

             Slightly relieved and angry beyond comprehension, Molly excused herself under the pretext of using the restroom, and ended up sitting in the quiet living room, looking at the picture of Mary John kept on the end table.

            Oh, how she missed her friend, how she missed her companionship, her solid advice and unfailing honesty.

           

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I need to know how many of you were about to mutiny in the beginning with Sherlock and Molly in bed? Did I get ya?
> 
> Thank you all for your comments!!!


	18. Water's Edge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tissues recommended- cuz I was crying when I wrote this. So...

“Molly?” Sherlock walked into the living room after 20 minutes, clearly having deduced that she shouldn’t be taking that long in the loo, “you ok? Are you in pain?” he looked instantly alarmed, and she realized he’d seen the tears streaming down her face. He took the room in three large steps, faltering slightly as if he’d wanted to sit next to her but stopped himself, choosing instead to stand in front of her with the coffee table serving as a barrier between them.

            “I’m fine,” she swiped at the tears on her face, “just wish Mary was here.”

            “Me too,” he said in a quiet voice. Guilt reared its ugly head as she realized she’d basically said she’d wished he had died instead of Mary, the very same idea that had driven him to near madness and suicide. She wanted to apologize, to tell him that she hadn’t meant it that way, she wanted to take any pain that her words might have caused, even if he didn’t take the wrong implication.

            But she stayed quiet, “what do you want?” she finally asked, exasperated.

            “To talk. Just talk,” he repeated, laughing slightly, “I feel like we just had this conversation.”

            “Bored already?” she rolled her eyes at him, putting the frame back on the table. “It took what, two days? What are you gonna do now, run off? Find your friend Higgins or Wiggins or whatever the hell his name is and push needles full of poison into yourself because you tried to talk to me for two whole days?”

            He swallowed, pressing his mouth into a tight line, “no,” he answered in a small voice, “I’m not giving up on us so easily.”

            “Oooh, right,” she nodded thoughtfully, sinking herself deeper into the couch, crossing her legs and arms, closing her body off completely from him as rage and hurt built and built, “that’s right. I’m so sorry. I forgot I was the one that walked away that first time. Remember, when we were making love? And I was in front of you, on my knees? All this time, I thought I’d been the one scuttle away. Sorry.”

            “I…I was the one that walked away Molly,” his jaw ticked as he clenched it, “I’ve changed since then.”

            She nodded thoughtfully, pursing her lips in a thoughtful gesture, “right. You’re right there too. You promised me…” she swallowed against the tears that welled up again, “you promised me you’d never leave me, that you’d stay with me no matter what, you’d protect me from the dark. I must’ve sustained some brain damage during my operation because I actually trusted you. You swore up and down that you’d changed. So that was my fault too. Should’ve known better.”

            “Molly,” he rubbed his face, dropping into the armchair, “what can I do? What can I say to prove…to prove to you that I’m not who I was.”

            She laughed, her voice was shrill, with just a hint of hysteria, “there’s nothing you can do Sherlock. I’ve been a fool, I should’ve walked away from you a long time ago.”

            “Then I would’ve died a long time ago,” his voice was soft.

            “I would still have my soul,” she told him quietly. They sat in a silence for a few minutes before Molly started chuckling, “you know what’s truly insane about us? About _this_? I still love you Sherlock, even after everything you’ve done, I still love you. And I always will, that’s not a secret. But what kind of love is it that I have to be on the brink of death and destruction in order for you to remember that you love me? I keep imagining what it’ll be like, every time we quarrel, or I feel like you’re not giving me enough attention, I’ll start jumping in front of buses or pestering serial killers, risking my life to remind you that you love me. Like that daft girl from those horrid vampire movies, trying to kill herself so her boyfriend would talk to her,” she met his gaze, “I may not be normal but I still want some normalcy in my life, some self-respect. And my lover needing me to be on the brink of death is abnormal even by our standards.”           

            He ran his fingers through his hair, gripping it and pulling in that familiar gesture of frustration, as if he was trying to get his brain to work, “it’s not like that anymore Molly. I’ve been working on it, I’ve been…talking to people about how to love without…without going to pieces over it. It’s hard,” he cleared his throat, “it’s…I have no control over myself, Molly. It’s like the moment I realized I’ve been in love with you all these years, you were handed this…this remote that is linked to my every thought, every emotion, ever whim. Everything I’ve ever been lives outside myself now. You control everything. And it’s _terrifying_.”

            Molly listened to his words, his tone, the sincerity in his declaration that threatened to overwhelm her. She raised her eyebrow instead, “who’ve you been talking to? Oprah?”

            Sherlock laughed weakly, “my Molly,” he sighed, “mostly my parents, actually, and John, and a uhm,” he cleared his throat, “a therapist that my brother found. It’s not working of course, all we do is talk in circles about feelings and Freud and abandonment issues. But…” he shrugged, “she specializes in people struggling with substance abuse who have experienced some sort of childhood trauma.”

            “You told her about…about Redbeard?” she asked.

            He nodded silently, “she’s also given me ways to distract myself when I get the urge to…to use,” he rubbed the back of his neck, “I drink coffee by the pot now, but I’ve gotten down to only two nicotine patches a day, and caffeine isn’t as dangerous, just makes me hyper, and the world’s best babysitter.”

            “What about your parents?” she asked him quietly, “what have they been telling you?”

            Sherlock stood up, walking around the living room with his hands stuffed into his pockets “mostly telling me about what I was like as a child, before…everything happened,” he let out a breath, forcing himself to say the words, “before Victor was…killed. Apparently, I was as emotional as Mycroft has always claimed. With an affinity for causing trouble,” he smiled ruefully, walking to the mantel, fidgeting with the framed photo of John, Mary, and Rosie the day they’d brought their baby home from the hospital. “I was also a cuddler,” he laughed, and suddenly Molly imagined him as a chubby little boy with those bright, mischievous eyes and a mop of curly black hair, “I remember that bit now, just crawling into one of their laps, reading a book or just listening to them talk,” he chuckled again, “I remember I would sit next to Mycroft on those rare occasions we watched telly, and he’d be so annoyed because I would always lay my head on his shoulder. Even with Eurus…I always tried to hug her but,” he shrugged, “she never responded well to that.”

            Molly waited until he was facing away from her to quickly swipe away at the tears that had started leaking down her cheeks again, “what else do you remember?” she prodded gently, unable to keep herself quiet.

            “There was this one incident that…that Eurus told me about, at Sherrinford. I’d forced myself to forget,” he walked back to sit on the sofa again, “it was Christmas. We were in the nursery, at Musgrave. Mum and dad were downstairs, Mycroft was reading or something in the next room, so the two of us were alone. She was drawing and I was just minding myself, playing with my new toys. It was pretty late at night, we kids were allowed to stay up later than usual as a treat,” he paused then, looking up straight into her eyes, “I swear to you Molly, I have spent these past few months trying to remember what she did, but I can’t. I just remember screaming, and _screaming_ so loudly that my throat was torn up for weeks afterwards, I remember that part well. Mostly because I tasted blood in the back of my throat,” he shook his head.

            “What happened?”

            “I just remember Mycroft and our parents rushing into the room. I remember Mycroft grabbing me and lifting me away from her, my father running into the room and subduing Eurus, my mother caught somewhere in the middle,” he rubbed his forehead, “I remember her asking my sister what she’d been doing to me, why she’d been making me scream. And Eurus said that she thought she’d been making me laugh,” he shrugged, “I still can’t remember what she was doing.”

            Sherlock had never talked about his sister with her. The conversations they had had were woefully lacking in detail. She never dared press him about it, and always hoped that if he needed to talk about something to do with his sister, he knew to just mention it to her. She had relied on blind faith in his love for her, and she’d lost more times than she could count. But the fact that he was making the effort to tell her such horrendous stories, giving her even more power over his heart…she was astonished.

            “Were you high, that night you came to my flat? When I was released from the hospital?” the question had been haunting her, tormenting her. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw how tender he’d been, how sweetly he’d loved her that night. Thinking that he’d been high…it eviscerated her.

            “Yes,” his voice was a soft whisper, and he refused to meet her gaze.

            “I’m not in control of myself either you know,” she told him softly after absorbing the information, “you’ve been holding my remote longer than you’re even aware,” he looked stricken at her soft words, leaning forwards as if trying to absorb them, “my every happiness depends on you Sherlock. But that’s what love is isn’t it? That’s what a relationship is. Your heart living outside your body, and you walk around day after day with the knowledge that you can be destroyed with a single word by a single person. You walk around knowing that you’re having the shittiest day possible, but with one text, one single person can make all of that disappear. Your heart’s safe Sherlock, it was always safe with me. I’ve been more careful of your emotions and sensibilities than I have been with my own. And look what it’s gotten me,” she sighed.

            “Look what it’s gotten me,” he said ruefully, “pushing away the only worthwhile thing in my life like a bloody coward.”

            She chuckled, “I don’t think I have the patience to try anymore,” she told him frankly, “I’m just so tired of trying, and trying, and trying, with you just…sitting there, not lifting a finger. When you came to me that night, you were such a comfort Sherlock, I don’t think I can ever put into words how much I needed that. But I also needed you to stay with me the next day, I needed you to hold my hand when Lestrade told me they’d caught…him. Christ,” she breathed, “you think it’s hard for _you_ to feel vulnerable with me? Imagine what it’s been like for me, to put myself on the line _knowing_ what you’re like. And be proven right, every. Single. Time.”

            “Christ,” he echoed her, burying his face in his hands, pressing his palms into his eyeballs, “what have I done,” he murmured so softly that she convinced herself that she had imagined it.

            “Being in love just isn’t enough Sherlock,” she told him softly, “you can’t just pick and choose if you want the bad bits or the good bits of it all. You have to take everything as it is, as it comes to you. And if that love is strong enough,” she shrugged, “it can overcome it all.”

            “Help me become strong enough then,” when he looked up at her, his eyes were luminous, a neon shade of turquoise that burned through her, “I think I’m ready now. I think I can be strong enough now.”

            She shook her head, curling into herself even more, “I can’t take that chance, not again,” Molly sniffed, “I don’t think there’s enough of me left to try.”

            “Molly…” his mouth moved without sound, and he ended up with his head bent, covering his face with his hands.

            They stayed in silence for endless heartbeats, each lost in their thoughts, in the hurt that they had inflicted on each other. Molly watched him, waiting for the old Sherlock to emerge, and run out of the room, too assaulted and uncomfortable with everything that was being said in the room, that had been discussed. But he didn’t, he surprised her by remaining there in the room with her, unmoving but there.

            The stupidest thing she could do in her life, in that moment, was give Sherlock another chance, to give him the power to hurt her again, the same way he’d done. She honestly didn’t have anything left in her to give, didn’t think she could survive being abandoned by him again.

            But wasn’t she being a hypocrite, telling him that it was ok for love to hurt, for it to be hard and imperfect, that you couldn’t take the good without bad…and abandon their love just because she was scared and broken?

            She looked at the man sitting across from her, his body language resolute. She took note of the fact that he looked healthier than she’d ever seen him before, more receptive, and aware of the world around him. He wasn’t exactly a social butterfly, having spent most of the party with the children and avoiding the adults, but when he did interact with the adults, he was less…selfish. Kinder, willing to listen, engaging even. Quicker to flash a genuine smile that lit up his entire face.

            Molly felt dizzy, and felt as if she stood on some sort of precipice, precariously poised between taking a step back into safety where she would never know what her future with Sherlock held. Or take the plunge, and find pleasure in the freefall. Or land with a splatter on the pavement.

            The analogy disturbed her slightly, recalling the fall she’d helped him orchestrate, faking his death. That had been the first time she’d seen Sherlock vulnerable, as helpless as he’d ever gotten up to that point. But he had improved even from then...she remembered the multiple occasions before that where he’d hurt her feelings, where he’d acted with arrogant cruelty born of his ignorance. She recalled the millions of times before that fateful Christmas where he’d said nasty things to her that her left her bleeding and cut. But that Christmas, when he’d apologized to her…the journey of the man before her had started out with that apology, all those years ago.

            He was a man broken by the world around him, shattered at an early age, forced to contain himself in a cocoon that sheltered the child inside him that had been hurt so badly. He was a man capable of great love, unselfish love but didn’t possess the tools that would help him give that love without destroying himself.

            She was a woman from an ordinary world, an ordinary life, thrust into an extraordinary situation, with an extraordinary man. The extraordinary situations tested her beyond her capabilities but she somehow walked away with a few bumps and bruises, proving to herself that she was stronger than she knew.

She was Atlas reincarnated as a pathologist, in love with a sociopath.

Molly Hooper took a deep breath, saying a quick prayer before standing up, wincing slightly as her skin pulled in her chest. She walked over to him, and stepped off the ledge.

She ran her hand silently through his hair and he shuttered, “if you do anything stupid, if you leave me again Sherlock Holmes, I swear to God you will wake up from a deep sleep to find yourself dissolving in a vat of lye.”

Sherlock looked up at her with a shocked expression, gripping her wrist in his hand as his breath exploded in a chuckle he couldn’t contain, not bothering to hide the tears that suddenly flooded his eyes. He kissed the inside of her wrist, “understood.”

 

           


	19. Breathless

            Sherlock’s father had advised him that if he really wanted Molly back, and if he wanted to build their relationship to something that would last, Sherlock would have to learn to crawl, then walk, before he could run.

            And Molly believed in that method too, categorizing the crawling part when they agreed to at least think about working on their relationship, which they had done at their goddaughter’s party. The walking would be the relationship building itself, where they reacquainted themselves with the other. And the running part, well, Molly didn’t know how to define that one yet.

            But walk they did.

            She forced them to become friends again, to do ordinary things but in their extraordinary ways. She made him learn about trust, about what it was like to gain it and keep it, showed him its value.

            They started out with the simple act of getting coffee together every morning. She would meet him there, and he would always wait for her. She knew that the old Sherlock would’ve become exasperated by the routine, by the fact that he could just sneak into her apartment every morning and they’d have coffee in her kitchen. But this new and progressing Sherlock…soon he learned her order, and she would get to the little surreptitious café to find him sitting there with a newspaper, at their regular table with her latte and cranberry orange scone, waiting. They would spend their hour together talking about everything under the sun, usually starting with the newspaper. He would ask about her plans for the day, she’d ask about his, then they’d share a quick kiss on the sidewalk before heading off to start their destinations.

            Throughout the day, he would text her at random, telling her things. Interesting cases he had encountered, the strange people he came across, the completely insane, and of course, whatever hilarious thing he encountered, he shared with her. He’d even told her that whenever he used the cake emoji, it meant he was around his brother.

They would meet for lunch sometimes, just to see each other and be together for that brief space of time.

            He’d also become an expert on dates, but Molly had a feeling that was thanks to a lot of pointers by John Watson and, somewhat surprisingly, Sherlock’s parents. He took her out to dinner every Friday and Saturday night, brunch every Sunday. He even learned to take her to the movies and saving his comments for the end, making her giggle by having a notepad in his lap so he could remember everything he wanted to complain about.

One day she arrived for their coffee date to find him absolutely vibrating with energy. “You know that actor from that show you like so much? The one with the overly complicated name from _Parade’s End_?”

            “Says the man named William Sherlock Scott Holmes,” she’d grinned at him over the brim of her latte.

            He’d rolled his eyes at her, “his name sounds like a fart in the bath, admit it.”

“It does not!” she’d protested indignantly.

“ _Anyway_ ,” he’d steam-rolled over any further protests, “he’s doing some play at the National Theater, Mycroft pulled some strings, and we’re going to see it Friday night.”

One day he’d taken her to a restaurant near the beach in East Sussex, and she’d caught him staring at her when she’d closed her eyes to enjoy the warmth of the sun on her face. She was wearing a top that had covered her chest completely, even though the weather had been hotter than normal and he could tell she was yearning to wear something more breathable, tugging at the collar.

“You don’t have to be ashamed of your scar you know,” he’d murmured quietly, leaning across the table to lace their fingers together, too perceptive as always. “I’ve always thought of scars as roadmap to a person’s strengths.”

She’d laughed at him, rubbing the skin between his index and thumb with hers, “I feel like until you wear something other than a suit all day long to cover _your_ scars, you can’t tell me otherwise.”

He’d looked surprised at that. And old Sherlock wouldn’t have said anything, wouldn’t have commended her perceptiveness, or said something incredibly hurtful to cover his own wounded heart. But the new Sherlock he was trying to be for her, forced himself to nod, “you’re right. The scars I have on my body from years of doing my brother’s ‘leg work’ do dictate what kinds of clothes I wear.”

So the next day, he’d gone out and bought t-shirts and even jeans. He didn’t necessarily walk around shirtless now, but he was spotted wearing the jeans and short sleeved t-shirts around Baker street or while running errands. He looked so much younger in the new additions to his wardrobe that Lestrade had walked by him in the street one time, and hadn’t recognized Sherlock. He didn’t push Molly to wear anything low cut, but he let her know in small ways that she was beautiful, no matter what marred her skin.

The day she returned to work, he had a massive bouquet of purple tulips waiting for her at her desk with a note attached that read, “remember to save me a pair of kidneys. I want to examine the effects of the botulinum toxin on them at different increments after death, I love you. -SH”. She’d laughed at that, and kept the note in her phone case, rereading it throughout the day. He was a new and improved Sherlock, but he was still Sherlock.

Around noon that day, as she had finally fallen back into the routine of work, he’d swept into the morgue with his coat fluttering behind him like a superhero’s cape; his face intense, collar turned up, cheekbones set on stun and eyes on fire. He hadn’t said a word as he’d grabbed her arm, turned her around to face him, cupping her face in his large hands and kissed her so slowly, so exquisitely, his coat fluttering and settling around them. She’d wanted to grab him, to hold onto him but she had on latex gloves covered in a dead man’s blood. “How’s your first day going, darling?” he murmured against her mouth as she kept her hands up and away from him.

“Not bad,” she told him, not resisting the temptation to flick her tongue out to taste his mouth, “just getting back into the groove of it.”

“Doesn’t sound too bad,” he’d breathed before dipping his head down to kiss her again, just as slowly.

“Stop snogging you two! I’m about to come in!” John had hollered from down the hall, “3, 2, 1,” and of course Sherlock had kissed her again just when Watson came into the room. “Get a room,” he’d muttered, but hadn’t been able to hide his delight in the pair when Molly had pulled back with a giggle.

The pair had taken Molly out to lunch that day, with Mike Stamford tagging along for old times’ sake. She had never enjoyed a lunch hour so much before, stuffed as she was between John and Sherlock in the booth of the Turkish restaurant they’d chosen. She’d sat so close to Sherlock that she might as well have been in his lap, his arm draped across the back of the booth, and she’d luxuriated in snuggling to his side.

There was a new possessiveness to him now. When they were out in public, he used small touches to mark her as his, or to ground himself, as if to remind himself that she was there, and she was there with him. She remembered watching the couple on the tube, and how jealous she’d been that they’d been doing nothing but holding hands. And as she walked the streets of London with her arm through Sherlock’s, or his arm wrapped around her shoulders or waist, or just holding hands as they strolled, she no longer felt like she had need to be jealous of them. During social gatherings, whether it was with their family and friends, or a charity event that Molly insisted they go to, he touched her in small ways there too. His hand on the small of her back, touching her arm to get her attention and just smiling into her eyes, getting her a drink without her having to ask for it, or simply taking her hand in his and kissing her hand or the inside of her palm.

Molly had asked her own therapist for books that she could read, any literature that would help her support her lover deal with sobriety and trauma. And they’d even done joint sessions with Sherlock’s therapist to talk about what had happened to them, helping both Sherlock and Molly understand the fallout of her kidnapping. It was hard for both of them, and they both had resisted the joint sessions but eventually, they’d talked over it and had decided it was a step worth taking.

Another step forward, another step learned together.

_Walk on through the wind, walk on through the rain…_

They had even discussed the merits of her going with him to Sherrinford, to watch him and Eurus compose their newest piece together. He’d looked thoughtful as they talked about it, holding her hands in his, he’d been looking down at their intertwined fingers, “I want you to meet her, to see my sister, but there’s a part of me that’s terrified of her, and what will be triggered in her if she sees you.”

She’d leaned forward then to kiss the top of his bowed head, “I understand. I’d love to meet her, to understand you better, but I get it.”

One of the most interesting things he had told her about himself was about his mind palace, about the way he peppered it with people that held the bits of information he needed. She found herself shocked, mesmerized as he told her about the role she played in his mind. “You saved my life, and didn’t even know it. You were there when I got shot,” he told her, purposefully keeping his back to her as he fumbled around, making her tea, “and you told me whether I should fall forwards or backwards. My mind was in chaos…but you, you kept me sane. You were the voice of reason.”           

She had chuckled, nibbling at the lemon pound cake they’d just baked. “Am I still like that in your mind palace? Logical and even-minded?”

“I now have two Molly’s in mind,” he told her, finally turning around and bracing himself on the counter across from her, “there’s the Molly that’s essentially my much smarter colleague,” she had laughed at his obvious flattery, “and there’s my Molly, the Molly only I get to see, tucked away in your own luxurious suite, always waiting to soothe me.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, “how often is this Molly dressed?”

“Not very,” he had grinned at her, leaning across the kitchen island to kiss her.

They also had an unspoken rule.

Sherlock wasn’t allowed to come to her apartment, and if he did, it was only in a social context or he never went inside. She could visit Baker street all she wanted, with the understanding that sex was off the table, for now. They were still finding their balance, still learning to walk together. But lately, it got harder and harder for Molly to leave him at night.

Usually the flat was full of people, clients and friends coming in and out, usually accompanied by Mrs. Hudson and Rosie. Once everyone had gone home though, she would find herself sitting in Sherlock’s lap in the leather chair by the fireplace, her arms wrapped around his neck as he held her by the waist, kissing each other so tenderly that she sometimes felt as if she was giving him her heart and soul with each breath he stole from her.

Eventually, Molly couldn’t walk away from him.

It was at the end of a long day that had lasted way too long for both of them. There was a new serial killer in town, and it was all hands-on deck. They had spent the bulk of the day with their eyes glued to their microscopes in the lab, with Molly insisting that they at least order pizza if they weren’t going to take a proper break. She knew what he was like when he was on a case, and she’d practically force fed him a slice. They’d gotten home late, and Molly was in the middle of taking a sip from her tea when she realized she had just thought of Baker street as home.

She looked down at Sherlock, his head in her lap with his eyes closed, wearing a sky-blue t-shirt and jeans, his feet bare. She wondered how he would react if he knew that she thought of Baker street as her home now, that she had realized that her home was wherever her sociopath lived. The old Sherlock would have definitely freaked out, but this new Sherlock was capable of surprising her.

As if sensing her watching him, he opened his eyes and looked directly into her eyes. Lately, there was something new in his eyes. They had always stunned her before, and not just because of the way they changed colors. His eyes held such intelligence and perceptiveness, even his mischievousness was there for everyone to see. But lately...there was something new in them that mesmerized her, that held her breath and stole it away completely. Somehow, they had become more intense, more gripping. And she had thought that to be impossible.

            “What?” he asked, reaching up to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear.

            “Nothing,” she smiled, her hand rubbing a circle on his chest, “Just…thinking.”

            “About?” he asked curiously, lifting a brow in such a posh manner that it made her laugh. “Oh Molly Hooper,” he hoisted himself up to sit, facing her, “how I love you,” he told her, pulling her into his arms, and she went willingly, and let him kiss her.

            He leaned back against the couch, propping his legs up on the coffee table as she straddled him, gripping his hair in that way she did that usually drove him mad with lust. She moaned into his mouth, and he found himself dying to touch her soft skin…as if he didn’t make the contact right now, he would wither and die. She arched against him and he couldn’t help running his hands up her elegant back, her shirt having ridden up to expose that sweet spot at the base of her spine.

            Touching her electrified him, and she pulled back to look down into his eyes as he ran his hands across the skin at the small of her back, urging her closer. He held his breath, knowing she was about to walk away from him, telling him good night and leaving him with an erection that would not go away without Molly. He expected her to end it like she had done for the past few months, with a softer kiss, a whispered “I love you” and she’d be out there.

            But this was Molly.

            This was his Molly.

            His unpredictable, extraordinary Molly.

            She held his gaze as she leaned down, dipping her tongue into his open mouth and never breaking eye contact.

            She turned him into a beast then, a berserker, a creature that lived and died and breathed for Molly.

            Neither of them knew how but they ended up in his bedroom, in the tangled sheets of his unmade bed, struggling to get closer and closer. Somehow, they ended up with him standing up, shucking the shirt over his head impatiently and Molly kneeling before him, struggling with the button and zipper of his jeans. Her fingers were trembling as her blood bumped through her body like a drum beat. “Fuck,” she cursed, then burst out laughing, leaning her forehead against his thigh in exasperation, “I can’t get your blood jeans off.”

            “I should get back to trousers then,” he grinned, bending to lift her up to her feet, unable to stop himself from kissing her again even as his own hands fumbled with the damned button and fly. But finally, as he kissed her and kissed her and kissed his Molly, he got them off and was so thankful he’d decided not to wear any underwear that day. Molly’s reaction drove him crazy, groaning wildly against his mouth, pressing herself against him as she gripped his bare bottom in her hands. There was a shocking intimacy now, he was stark naked and so aroused it hurt, and Molly was still dressed in her work clothes.

            That had to change.

            He kissed her throat, licking every inch of bare skin he could get to as he tugged at the bottom of her shirt. “Maybe,” she pulled away, her voice shaking, “maybe we should leave my shirt on? You…you haven’t seen the scar and it’s so hideous. I don’t…I don’t want to put you off.”

            She broke his heart.

            He pressed his forehead against hers, breathing like a winded horse, “Molly Hooper,” he told her on a breath, “trust me,” he grinned and lifted the shirt over her head. He kissed her again, distracting her from whatever doubts that filled her mind by rubbing himself against her, biting her lower lip before he kissed a trail down her throat, to her collarbone, tasting that sweet hollow at the base of her throat, his lips a whisper over the surgical scar, his fingers tracing the lace cups of her bra, thumbs passing over her nipples as he licked her skin, where the stitches had been.

            When he finally slipped inside her, they both shouted in pleasure and for a moment, Molly wondered how thin the walls of Baker street were. But she didn’t care as he thrust inside her, as he dropped his head against her throat, pumping his hips as she clawed at his back, screaming. He was unhinged, wild as he took her harder, faster, setting a wild, punishing tempo. She clung to him, biting his throat, flicking her tongue in his ear, dragging her teeth across his jaw as he surged so deep inside her that she swore she could feel him in her womb.

            “Fuck me,” she was shocked to hear herself groan in his ear, wrapping her legs around his waist and locking her legs, “oh Sherlock, fuck me,” she had urged, and he had.

            They ended up breathless on the bed, their bodies wrung full of ecstasy and months of pent up want, slick with perspiration and revived and reveling in their love. He was on his back, a white sheet draped over him in such a way that it made Molly wish she was a painter or could sketch or something. He looked like a work of art, his hair all mussed, his lips swollen from kisses, his eyes mellow from his orgasm, the sheet just hiding his loins from view, leaving one long leg and sinewy thigh bare. She propped herself up on her elbow over him, her fingers tracing the scars on his chest now, his shoulder, the jagged one right beneath his rib that had clearly been made with a serrated knife.

            “Spend the night with me,” he murmured, cupping her face in his palm.

            She nodded, putting her head on his chest, and falling asleep.

            A part of her woke up a little later, expecting him to have disappeared again. And she found herself alone in his bed, she wanted to throw up. But then she heard the toilet flush, and he walked back into the bedroom, naked as the day he was born, running a hand through his hair as he yawned so wide his jaw cracked. “Go back to sleep,” he murmured, climbing back in beside her, and pulling her back over his chest.

            The next morning, he woke her up in the best way possible, with his head buried between her legs and the most deliciously evil smile on his lips and a brightness in his eyes as he wrung orgasm after orgasm from her prone body using his lips, teeth and an all too knowing tongue.

            Later that day, Watson asked him when he was in such a bloody good mood as they tried to track down the serial killer for Lestrade and the Yard. Sherlock had barely glanced up from the file he was reviewing, answering rather haughtily that he’d had a good breakfast. Watson frowned, asking what it had been to make him so deliriously happy, and became even more perplexed when Sherlock answered, “peaches and cream.”

            Molly squeaked and ducked behind her microscope to hide her reddening cheeks.

            Of course, the more nights they spent together, the more they learned about the other one, and the nightmares that woke them up in the middle of the night. Molly’s nightmares usually ended with her gasping for air, and opening in her eyes without much fuss, reaching for Sherlock in bed beside her, just to know that she was there. He would usually wake up and tuck her against him, murmuring to her until they both fell asleep again.

            Sherlock’s nightmares on the other hand, scared the life out of her. He usually woke up screaming his lungs out, flailing and tossing the sheets aside, sometimes even jumping out of bed as if he were about to run for the door. Sometimes he would be gasping John’s name, sometimes Mycroft, sometimes Molly. The first time it had happened, she had been paralyzed by fear until she figured out he was still asleep. Now she woke up just as the nightmare started gathering steam in his subconscious, and she’d dive between his flailing arms, holding him and kissing his cheek and ear, whispering to him until he woke up. He’d be so relieved he would stare straight at the ceiling for a few moments, then bury himself so deep in Molly that they forgot where Molly began and Sherlock ended.

            _Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart…_

            Step by step, inch by inch, they progressed.

            Of course, along the way, as they supported each other, finding their legs like newborn giraffes unfamiliar with their legs, there were fights.

Mostly Sherlock’s fault, to no one’s surprise. Not even his.

Their biggest shouting matches happened on the days when stress overwhelmed Sherlock, and he became manic, a whirling, Tasmanian devil in the apartment looking for cigarettes. He lashed out, he became impossible. But he had learned to stop and take a deep breath, counting to ten through gritted teeth.

Whoever happened to be in the room with him during those moments usually received an apology, and a cup of tea. If it was Molly, he would take her to her favorite restaurant and a quiet walk around the river. If it was John, Sherlock’s life was easy because he could just get away with an apology. If it was Mrs. Hudson, she usually got a hug from Sherlock.

            Molly had learned to keep emergency nicotine patches stashed around his flat, and had taught him to chew gum whenever the urge to smoke came on. She’d caught him smoking a few times, and hadn’t let him kiss her or come near her for the rest of the day. He fought the urge to smoke harder after that.

            She also started calling him her puppy, because sometimes all he needed was to be taken outside for a walk around the neighborhood, to shake off the excess energy that clung to him. When he was in those moods, sex was usually too intense for him to handle, so they walked silently until he could contain himself. And it was interesting for her to watch, to learn about the way his brain worked. He was too much even for himself sometimes, too cerebral, his body too human to contain his massive intellect. But she learned to help him handle it, to deal with it all.  

              Another epic fight had been the fact that he didn’t take care of his body when he was on a case. He didn’t eat, didn’t sleep, hardly drank anything except black tea. “Look!” she’d shouted, just to get his attention because he was literally rambling around the flat, climbing over furniture and muttering to himself, occasionally climbing over Molly, “you’re a 35-year-old man. I shouldn’t have to remind you to eat and drink and sleep. For God’s sake Sherlock, what do you do when you’re out working outside London and I’m not there to be all ‘hey, Sherlock, did you friggin’ remember to eat today?’”

            “John does it,” he told her, standing with one leg on the armrest of the sofa and the other on the coffee table, looking down at her with narrowed eyes and arms crossed.

            John had laughed from his armchair, “right, like you ever listen to me.”

            “See!” Molly had rolled her eyes, swatting at his leg with the book she’d been reading when he climbed over her.

            “Ow!” he said, sounding more offended than actually injured by the swat.

            “You need to eat. And sleep. You need to take care of your body,” she narrowed her eyes back at him, “if you don’t, I’ll keep your diet too. You don’t eat, I don’t eat. You don’t sleep, I don’t sleep.”

            “Don’t be silly,” he’d laughed then realized she was serious, “this is blackmail.”

            “This is us,” she had told him, “blackmail is the only way I can get anything done around here,” she’d then glanced at John, “thanks for fixing my bike by the way.”

            “Glad I could be of help!” he very carefully avoided her eyes.

            “Wait! What’s she got on you?!” Sherlock had hopped off the coffee table.

            “Nothing!” John practically shouted, then cleared his throat, composing himself, “nothing,” he said in a softer tone, and Molly had dissolved into laughter.

            But Sherlock did start taking care of himself after that, and found that starvation hadn’t really been helping him solve cases faster. It had just made him more prone to lashing out at the people around him.

            “You know,” John had very casually suggested a few weeks later, when Sherlock had mentioned how eating didn’t really hinder or enhance his powers of deduction, “you should try doing yoga, a regular exercise routine would help you loads more.”

            “Shut up,” was all that Sherlock had had to say on the matter.

            Sherlock and Molly settled into a normalcy that they both flourished in.

Whether their work brought them together or not, whether they had a day from hell or a pleasant one, they ended it together in Baker street. Cuddling on the couch, or sitting in Sherlock’s armchair with Molly in his lap, or even working from home on their computers, their legs in each other’s lap, not talking as they worked, kissing every now and then amidst whatever they were doing.

He was capable of moments of unyielding sweetness.

They usually had music playing in the apartment, never agreeing to anything except the station on Spotify that only played Frank Sinatra songs. But Molly needed music to think and function, so they compromised on Sinatra. One time, she found herself pulled up to her feet, swept into his arms as “I’ve Got the World On A String” started playing, dancing with Sherlock in the middle of the living room. He was such a lithe dancer, and even her two left feet were graceful when they danced together.

On another occasion, he’d come to Baker street to find her already there, sitting in her corner of the sofa when Nick Cave’s “Come Into My Sleep” had come on. He’d listened to it for a moment, frowning at Molly, “this is good, isn’t it?” But Molly was floating away to the music, unable to hear Sherlock. Just looking at her expression, he’d known the song swept her off her feet. So, he’d literally swept her off feet and into his arms, holding her as they swayed to the words, to the music, and ended up tangled and half-naked together on the floor.

            “Just move in!” Sherlock finally yelled one day as she ran through the flat with wet hair, running late for work as she tried to find her bra.

            “What?” she asked, finally finding the scrap of black lace where Sherlock had flung it the night before in a haze of lust in the kitchen.

            “Move in,” he told her, watching as she put her bra on hurriedly while he languished naked in bed, a pagan king. “It’s such a hassle for you to have to go to your flat, grab your clothes, then come and spend the night here. Your place is just your storage space right now,” he shrugged, crawling across the bed and pulling her towards him by grabbing her belt loops, “move in with me.”

            She kissed him on the cheek, “let me think about it.”

            “What’s there to think about?” he’d nearly shouted,

            “I just need to think about it, ok?” she’d pushed away from him, pulling on her top, “I’ll have an answer for you tonight after work, promise.”

            Of course, her answer had been yes. And she had delighted in watching John, Lestrade and Sherlock help her pack everything up in boxes and carry them 221B Baker street, her new home, with her love.

           


	20. Under This Moon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentine's Day! xx

            Molly Hooper frowned all the way home one Saturday afternoon, trying to figure out why Mike Stamford had asked her to go in that day. There was nothing important pending, and she was usually given the weekends off, mostly because Mike liked her, and she needed to be careful about over extending herself. She’d been glad to go to Bart’s if it had been something of significant, but there hadn’t been, and she’d basically spun in her office chair all day until Mike had poked his head in and told her to go home.

            When she got to Baker street, the door of 221B swung wide open before she could even touch the door handle, “don’t come inside,” Sherlock took a step outside, practically pushing her down the front steps with his chest.

            “What?” she was bewildered, frowning up at her man, “what’s wrong?”

            “Nothing’s wrong,” he told her, straightening the collar of his coat, “just don’t go inside. Let’s go somewhere quiet, just the two of us.”

            She lifted a brow, “what’s going on?” she repeated “why can’t I go upstairs?”  
            “Trust me,” he bent down to give her a kiss, “hello darling, by the way.”

            “Hi,” she grinned, gripping his coat, “we can go out if you want but I need to change. I feel dreadful.”

            “Our entire family’s upstairs,” he finally told her, looking as if he had just told her that their toilet had exploded and their apartment was covered in sludge. “Your mother, _my_ parents. Your brother, _my_ brother,” he shook his head, “ghastly. They kept saying something about a house warming party for you.”

            She laughed, “Sherlock, we’re not just going to leave our guests upstairs,” she put her hand on his chest, intending to push him back to the door so they could go inside.

            “But why,” Sherlock didn’t yield, “I was thinking you and I could go somewhere tonight, maybe somewhere where there’s dancing,” he narrowed his eyes, “why should we accommodate our unannounced, unwanted guests? They should’ve called, we have plans elsewhere.”

            “No we don’t,” she told him, wrapping her arms around his waist and looking up at him, “let’s go back inside and entertain our uninvited and unexpected guests, then once they’re on their way, we can dance to our tune.”

            He rolled his eyes again, “fine,” he bent down to kiss her again, slowly this time, taking his time and she clung to him, there in front of Baker street. He tasted like tea and chocolate, and most of all, he tasted like home. “Back into the lion’s den,” he sighed, turning around, and keeping her hands wrapped around his waist from behind as they walked back inside.

            Upstairs in their flat, their family were waiting almost expectantly for the couple to come upstairs. Greg and Mycroft were standing by the windows, each holding a glass of something in their hands, their head close together as they talked. Mrs. Hudson was in the kitchen with Mrs. Holmes, directing John and Mark who had apparently volunteered to help them cook. Mr. Holmes was sitting with Rosie in his lap, and even they were in deep discussion about something. Sarah Hooper was the first one to spot the couple as they walked upstairs, “hello dear,” she came to hug her daughter.

            “Hi mum,” she pulled away from her mother, Sherlock sneaking out from behind her with a huff, taking her coat and his to their bedroom, “hello everyone! What an unexpected surprise!”

            “We knew Sherlock lacked the sense to throw you a house warming party, so we took it upon ourselves,” Mrs. Holmes told her, coming forward to envelop Molly in a tight hug.

            She noticed Sherlock was standing ramrod straight behind his mother, with the most perplexing expression on his face. He looked slightly thoughtful, more constipated than anything. “Molly, I—”

            Mrs. Holmes quickly cut him off, which confused Molly even more. “Why don’t you go and change, dear,” she suggested kindly, “we’ve decided it’s a formal occasion.”

            “Oh…kay,” Molly was even more confused as she walked to their bedroom. After a quick shower, she put on one of her favorite purple dresses with pale flowers, blow drying her hair, slightly impressed at the fact that she managed to make it look chic. Rosie snuck in, helping Molly put on just enough make-up, even putting on some lip gloss on her goddaughter.

            When they walked out, the amount of noise in the room made her laugh. Everyone seemed to be talking at the same time, some people drinking alcohol, some choosing tea instead. She laughed aloud when she saw Sherlock sitting on the couch between their mothers, looking completely engaged with whatever they were discussing.

            John pressed a wine glass in her palm, “here,” he grinned, toasting her with his own glass, “welcome to Baker street!”

            “Cheers,” she grinned, sipping from the wine.

            Baker street was full of laughter and noise that night, with a myriad of discussions popping around. Whereas Sherlock was discussing knitting patterns with their mothers on the couch, John, Mark and Mr. Holmes were talking about that mornings football game between Liverpool and Arsenal, Mycroft and Greg discussing police tactics and politics within Scotland Yard. Mrs. Hudson was mostly in the kitchen, but kept popping her head out, a proud Liverpool fan, she was delighted at that mornings score, and teased Mr. Holmes endlessly about it. “Was it three or four, I can’t remember,” she grinned slyly before sneaking off into the kitchen.

            “Molly,” Sherlock got her attention a few hours later, having shooed their mothers away, “I want to ask you something,” he gestured for her to come and sit next to him, right beneath the painted smiley face.

            She plopped down next to him, grinning into her love’s eyes. She hadn’t really wanted to entertain their family either but she was rather enjoying herself now, surrounded by the people she knew loved her and her Sherlock. “What?” she asked after kissing his cheek affectionately.

            “So, I’ve been ring shopping,” he told her, reaching for something on the end table. It was one of those ring size things that jewelers usually had, “and I don’t know your ring size.”

            “Ring shopping?” Molly choked on the sip of wine she’d just taken, nearly spraying him with it, “ _ring shopping_?”

            “Yeah, ring shopping,” he told her while rolling his eyes in exasperation, as if unable to comprehend why she was so astounded, grabbing her left hand unceremoniously he continued, “I didn’t want to have to guess about your size, and I’ve _no_ idea how the hell these sizes even work.”

            He took possession of her ring finger and started fit her fingers through the various metallic rings that would help him decipher her ring size. She was astonished, looking at him as if he’d lost his mind, unaware that the entire family was watching them now, all grinning widely, with Greg Lestrade surreptitiously holding a camera to record it all.

            “Sherlock?” she looked at him, genuinely wondering if he’d lost his mind, “you daft cow, you’re supposed to keep this a surprise!” she laughed her surprise.

            “What’s the point of it being a surprise? I mean wouldn’t it make more sense if we just acknowledged the fact that we live together, we love each other, and we are definitely hoping to spend the rest of our lives together. I mean, _I’m_ planning on spending the rest of _my_ life with you. I don’t understand the social custom of marriage but you appreciate it, and my parents insist on it, and I’ve received several threats of violence from your brother if we didn’t get married soon. The only person who doesn’t mind that we’re not married yet is Mrs. Hudson but I feel as if her less than reputable marriage to a drug kingpin somehow speaks more of her moral turpitude than her views on marriage or whatever social construct of relationships we have insisted upon ourselves,” he finally paused for a breath, “none of these fit your finger.”

            She sat there, blinking at him, unable to say anything.

            “Here, try this,” he told her, and she looked down to see that he’d slipped a diamond ring on her finger.

            Her world stopped, coming to a screeching halt as she looked down at the ring. It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen, the band in intricate roses and vines, cushioning a square diamond. He was down on his knees in front of her now, his mercurial eyes luminous, holding on to the sofa by placing his hands on either side of her, caging her with his body.

            “Is that a yes?” he asked in a thick voice.

            She was bewildered, speechless. Her heart racing, “you haven’t asked me anything,” she told him on a whisper.

            “OH! Right,” he laughed nervously, “Molly Anne Hooper, my love, my heart and soul. My Molly. Will you marry me?”

            “Oh my God Sherlock yes,” she gasped, crying and laughing as she wrapped her arms around his neck, hugging him so hard neither of them could breath, “a thousand lifetimes yes,” she told him as the room erupted in applause and the sound of champagne bottles being opened.   

            Later, John Watson would tell her that he’d talked him out of writing “will you marry me?” in a petri dish with different bacteria’s and poisonous that had been the cause of death of any investigation they’d conducted together, and how they’d all been worried he would hyperventilate and pass out while getting ready for her to get home.

            She pulled back to look into her Sherlock’s eyes, brushing away his tears as the room disappeared around them. Molly smiled for her Sherlock, seeing in his eyes everything that she had ever wanted. It had taken them a while to get to this place, but once they finally found it, how sweet it was. It wouldn’t be easy for two extraordinary people to live together without clashing, but they had overcome so much already, she couldn’t imagine what they couldn’t handle together. “I love you,” she told him.

            “I love you too,” he told her, before kissing her breath into his lungs.

 

* * *

 

            “I met Sherlock and Molly on the same day,” John Watson told everyone, holding a Champagne flute, wearing a black tuxedo with a dusty rose-colored tie that matched the bridesmaid’s dresses, “I was looking for a flat mate and was taken to Bart’s hospital to meet him. He was beating a dead corpse with a riding crop, and she brought him coffee,” the wedding guests chuckled, “and after that day, my life was never the same.

Sherlock is…insufferable. In his own words at my wedding, he described himself as—” John consulted his notes, “’an unpleased, rude, ignorant and all around obnoxious arsehole that anyone could possibly have the misfortune to meet.’ And he was right. He’s an arsehole, but delightfully self-aware. Never in a million years would I have thought that I would be standing here, best man for Sherlock Holmes, who somehow managed to be worthy of Molly Hooper.”

He paused to clear his throat of the emotions that were slowly creeping into his tone, “Sherlock Holmes is one of the best men that I have ever met, however he describes himself. He is capable of great love, his intellect is unmatched by anyone, except his brother Mycroft. But when I met Molly Hooper, I knew she was too good for him. She possesses a kindness I have never encountered, a strength that blows me away, and as rumor has it around Bart’s, she can slam revolving doors, her calendar goes from March 31 directly to April 2nd because no one fools Molly Hooper, and she can unscramble an egg. But I stand here today, sure in the knowledge that Sherlock has made himself worthy of this wonderful woman, and I am so privileged to stand here as witness. At my wedding, Sherlock took up most of the day with his speech, I’m not as verbose, lucky you all.”

John raised his glass, using Sherlock’s own words, “ladies and gentlemen, pray charge your glasses and be upstanding, and help me toast Doctor Molly Anne Hooper and Mr. William Sherlock Scott Holmes. To the bride and groom!” he recited with a grin, looking at Sherlock and Molly:

May you be poor in misfortune,

Rich in blessings,

Slow to make enemies,

Quick to make friends,

But rich or poor, quick or slow,

May you know nothing but

Happiness from this day forward.

           

* * *

 

Sherlock looked down at his beautiful wife, mesmerized by her, completely ignorant of the guests that encircled them during their first dance, the flash of the camera dim compared to how she glowed in his arms. His wife looked so achingly beautiful, he hadn’t known what to do with himself in the church when he’d first seen her, walking down the aisle on her brother’s arm, her face covered by the lace of her veil holding a bouquet of flowers that were nothing compared to her beauty.  

John had chuckled, whispering, “breathe Sherlock, breathe,” behind him. He didn’t know why he’d been surprised at the simple elegance she exuded, her dress made of chiffon with a lace top that seemed to kiss her skin.

“My Molly,” he whispered now, taking her into his arm as they waited for the music to start. He hadn’t let her choose the song for their first dance, having practically taken over all the wedding planning tasks, citing his previous experience planning John and Mary’s. She’d been exasperated when he’d insisted that he get to pick their song, but had relented.

“As long as I get to dance with you, as your wife, I don’t care,” she had told him before wrapping her arms around him and kissing him oh so slowly.

He waited now, one arm wrapped around her waist, the other holding her hand against his chest. When the song started, he grinned at the way her face lit up in recognition, and they started moving together to the song that seemed to define their relationship.

_Take your accusations, your recriminations_

_And toss them into the ocean blue_

_Leave your regrets and impossible longings,_

_And scatter them across the sky behind you_

_And come into my sleep_

_For my soul to comfort and keep_

_Come into my sleep_

Sherlock put his lips against his wife’s ear, “whatever I am, whatever I was, whatever I may become, Molly Hooper, I will always need you, and only you.”

 

 

 

_Fin._


	21. Queen Ink

            Choosing the destination for their honeymoon had been an epic battle.

            They had ended up putting a map of the world on the wall, and thrown darts at it. “This is democratic,” John had whispered, sitting on the floor with Rosie, out of range.

            “At least I talked him out of the pistol,” Molly had told him, standing next to her fiancé to line her shot.

            The darts had worked, and the only one that hadn’t hit the middle of the ocean, had been San Francisco.

            And so, the day after their wedding, the new Mr. and Mrs. Holmes got on the plane to California, both excited for their first visit to the City by the Bay. But they were still Molly and Sherlock, so they were more excited about exploring Alcatraz Island and tracing the footsteps of the Zodiac Killer, and tracing the hundreds of gold rush-era ships buried beneath the city.

            Their second day in the city, they were greeted by the heavy fog that kept the city hidden from view. But Molly didn’t care as she stood in front of the Ritz-Carlton, her fingers intertwined with his as they waited for the bellhop to get a cab for them. There was sunshine wherever she went, as far as she was concerned. She hadn’t slept the night before either, because her husband hadn’t been able to keep his hands off her.

            Considering the fact that she had been the one to casually lean over on the couch to unzip his fly, taking him into her mouth, she was in no position to complain.

The city was unlike anything she had ever seen before, filled with a vitality, an energy that made her feel like she could step out and conquer anything in her path. Cars crowded the streets in chaos with large rambling buses and cable cars zooming past, taking turns at such high speeds she was amazed they didn’t crash every time. Women and men wearing business suits rushed down the street with purpose, never forgetting to pause to lend a helping hand, unthinkingly giving a homeless person their lunch or a few dollars to help them start their day. She was also fascinated by the fact that nearly everyone had a cup of coffee in their hands, and smiled at her if she happened to catch their eye.

            The snuggled together in the back of the taxi, snogging like a pair of horny teenagers after Sherlock gave the driver the address to the building they wanted to visit. They had read about it the night before, and had both decided they would stop there first then walk to the city center. When they arrived in front of their building, the newlyweds spent about fifteen minutes looking straight up at the repurposed building that had once served as a Masonic temple. They walked around the great white behemoth, pointing out the Masonic symbols that still remained in the façade.

            “Oh, shit! Excuse me!” someone bumped into them, knocking Molly into Sherlock’s side, “I’m so so sorry!”

            “No, it’s not your fault,” Molly steadied herself on her husband’s arm, “our fault for standing in the middle of the sidewalk.” The young lady frowned slightly, cocking her head at Sherlock, then looking back at Molly. She had long black hair, a round face, and was remarkably tall, taller than Sherlock almost. She cut an imposing figure wearing a black suit with a briefcase. She would’ve looked more commanding had it not been for the headphones in her ears, and the tattoo that peaked out from beneath her sleeve.

            “I’m sorry, do I know you from somewhere?” she asked Sherlock, taking out her earphones and Molly could hear the lyrics “pay witness to Sonny’s burning” blaring through. It was a wonder the girl was deaf.

            He raised an eyebrow at her, his eyes scanning her quickly, going from the top of her head, to her blue rimmed glasses, the gold cross around her neck, and the black Vans that did not at all match the formality of her suit. “Law student,” he told her.

            “OH! Holy fuck!” she gasped, “you’re that British consulting detective dude! I follow Dr. Watson’s blog,” she grinned, she extended her hand, introducing herself, “wow! I never thought I’d get to meet you. You’re pretty awesome yo.”

            Her husband smiled at the law student with a nod. Whatever he had deduced about her, he clearly approved of her because usually, Sherlock greeted fans with distaste. “Thank you,” he acknowledged. The girl awkwardly ended their conversation, running inside the building.

            “Interesting,” he muttered, wrapping his arm around his wife’s shoulder, guiding her down the street.  

            “How did you know she’s a law student?” Molly asked him.

            “Oh my darling wife, you see but you do not observe,” he said with exasperation, “the coffee mug she was holding had the name of a prestigious law resource center on it. Her hand, right hand, was covered in pen marks of different colored ink, suggesting that she is a highly visual learner who needs to mark large volumes of reading material by color coding it. We are also in the city center, and the building we were studying houses several offices that use law school interns as free labor. And she exuded a curious mix of over confidence and utter self-loathing. The only place you see that combination is in a law student.”

            She shook her head, laughing slightly as they crossed the street, wondering what new adventures waited for them.

           

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who know from Tumblr get what's happening here-- I wrote this chapter as just a bit of fun for myself and decided to tack it on to Her Midnight Man. This is absolutely the last chapter-- there are a few short stories within this universe like "Fluffy Ball of Doom" and "Signs of Four". If you enjoyed this, then you guys should check out Stranger Than Kindness, which is a story in progress!


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